EvoLen: Evolution-Guided Tokenization for DNA Language Model
Tokens serve as the basic units of representation in DNA language models (DNALMs), yet their design remains underexplored. Unlike natural language, DNA lacks inherent token boundaries or predefined compositional rules, making tokenization a fundamental modeling decision rather than a naturally specified one. While existing approaches like byte-pair encoding (BPE) excel at capturing token structures that reflect human-generated linguistic regularities, DNA is organized by biological function and evolutionary constraint rather than linguistic convention. We argue that DNA tokenization should prioritize functional sequence patterns like regulatory motifs-short, recurring segments under evolu...
| Authors | Nan Huang, Xiaoxiao Zhou, Junxia Cui et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 9 April 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 27 September 2026 |
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