AlphaGenome 2: Deciphering how cells read DNA to better understand disease

November 11, 2026 Science

Adam Gayoso, Natasha Latysheva, Pushmeet Kohli and Žiga Avsec

Our next-generation DNA sequence model bridges single-cell biology and human genetics, predicting how genetic variants affect hundreds of human cell types.

Today, we are announcing AlphaGenome 2, our next-generation model that predicts how DNA sequences and their variations impact specific human cell types, giving scientists a powerful new tool to uncover the cellular drivers of disease.

Cells are the building blocks of life. Every cell in our body carries the same DNA blueprint, yet each cell type and state—like a heart muscle cell or an immune cell fighting an infection—switches different genes on or off to do its job. Global efforts like the Human Cell Atlas are mapping this gene expression for millions of cells, but it is still an unsolved challenge to predict how subtle DNA variations affect this expression in cells, which is a key driver of human traits and disease.

Last year, we launched AlphaGenome to predict how DNA variants affect molecular activity across broad tissues. We expanded its reach with AlphaGenome Atlas, a platform containing predictions for all 9 billion possible single-letter changes in the human genome. These tools help researchers prioritize and interpret variant effects, driving discoveries in rare diseases, complex traits, and fundamental biology.

By zooming in from broad tissue averages to individual cell types and cell states, and redesigning the model’s architecture, AlphaGenome 2 represents a step-change improvement in variant predictive performance. Importantly, it allows researchers to predict variant effects in disease-relevant cells that would be missed in broad-tissue models, as well as predictions for cell and disease states that the model hasn’t seen before.