Journal Article

UniKineG: Unified-Coordinate Geometric Graphs Enable Robust Enzyme Kinetic Prediction

Liu, Shuangping, Wang, Xueyu, Mao, Jian, Liu, Kai, Shi, Peiqin

2026

Overview

Enzyme kinetic parameters (kcat, Km, and kcat/Km) are fundamental for quantifying catalytic efficiency and substrate specificity in biochemistry and drug discovery. However, experimental determination is resource intensive, and accurate prediction remains a persistent challenge due to the complex spatial nature of catalysis. In this paper, we present UniKineG, a novel deep learning framework that redefines kinetic prediction by modeling the explicit spatial state of enzyme–substrate complexes. Unlike conventional methods that treat proteins and ligands as isolated modalities, UniKineG employs molecular docking to embed both entities into a unified 3D coordinate system. Within this shared geometric context, we utilize a heterogeneous graph neural network integrated with geometric vector perceptrons (GVPs) to capture intricate vector-based interactions, such as directional hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic contacts, and electrostatic complementarity. This structure-based approach confers exceptional robustness: UniKineG effectively overcomes the dependency on high-sequence homology, demonstrating superior generalization on out-of-distribution (OOD) datasets encompassing both unseen enzyme sequences and diverse substrate scaffolds. Consistently outperforming state-of-the-art predictors, UniKineG achieves high-precision predictions. This work establishes a solid foundation for understanding enzyme–small molecule interactions in 3D space and offers a transformative tool for computational enzymology.

• Publisher: MDPI AG,Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)
• Subject: Deep Learning / Enzyme kinetics / Enzymes - chemistry / Enzymes - metabolism / Geometry / Graphs / Hydrogen Bonding / Kinetics / Ligands / Metabolism / Molecular Docking Simulation / Neural networks / Neural Networks, Computer / Semantics / Signal transduction / Substrate Specificity