arrow
Return

MBERA: Multi-Branch Evolutionary Retrosynthesis Algorithm

delete2026-03-26
delete0
PRE
AI
Y
Yan Zhang
H
Hao Hao
S
Shuai Wang
J
Jiaxi Zhuang
H
Hui Wang
T
Tiepeng Li
Y
Yueqing Zhang
Y
Ying Qian
L
Lianrui Hu
S
Shuanhu Gao *
何
何晓 (Xiao He) *
周
周爱民 (Aimin Zhou) *
DOI:10.1016/j.swevo.2026.102374delete
deleteOriginal
deleteShare
deleteSave
Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Multi-step retrosynthetic planning remains challenging due to the inherent multi-branch structure of real chemical syntheses, where multiple precursor sets may be coordinated. Existing search algorithms operate primarily on single root-to-leaf trajectories, making them ill-suited for reactions requiring parallel decomposition. To address this limitation, we propose a multi-branch evolutionary algorithm, a discrete evolutionary formulation designed specifically for multi-precursor retrosynthesis. It introduces a multi-branch genome encoding that captures different branch reactant expansions, enabling efficient navigation of combinatorial route spaces. A branch genetic operator further supports coordinated crossover and mutation across precursor paths. Across representative molecules, multi-branch evolutionary algorithm reduces single-step model calls by 70%–95% compared with classical tree-search algorithms and by more than 98% on the most challenging cases. The method exhibits stable behavior across different solution requirements and delivers improvements over established retrosynthetic search techniques.
Keywords:
Multi-step retrosynthesis
Multi-branch genome encoding
Evolutionary algorithm
Retrosynthetic planning
Combinatorial route space

Journal

Swarm and Evolutionary Computation cover
Swarm and Evolutionary Computation
IF:
8.5
Papers:
2.2K
Citations:
1.0W

Organization

E
east china normal university
Scholars:
3.1W
Papers: 2.1W
Citations: 25
Cited Papers

Cited Papers

Molecular fingerprint similarity search in virtual screening
errMETHODS
IF4.3
err2015-01-01
err561
PREAI
errCereto-Massague, Adria; Jose Ojeda, Maria; Valls, Cristina; Mulero, Miguel; Garcia-Vallve, Santiago; Pujadas, Gerard
errShare
errSave
Towards efficient discovery of green synthetic pathways with Monte Carlo tree search and reinforcement learning
err2020-01-01
err40
errOAAI
errWang, Xiaoxue; Qian, Yujie; Gao, Hanyu; Coley, Connor W.; Mo, Yiming; Barzilay, Regina; Jensen, Klavs F.
errShare
errSave
errShare
errSave
SCScore: Synthetic Complexity Learned from a Reaction Corpus
err2018-01-26
err208
PREAI
errColey, Connor W.; Rogers, Luke; Green, William H.; Jensen, Klavs F.
errShare
errSave
Retrosynthesis prediction with an interpretable deep-learning framework based on molecular assembly tasks
err2023-10-03
err27
errOAAI
errWang, Yu; Pang, Chao; Wang, Yuzhe; Jin, Junru; Zhang, Jingjie; Zeng, Xiangxiang; Su, Ran; Zou, Quan; Wei, Leyi
errShare
errSave
Molecule Edit Graph Attention Network: Modeling Chemical Reactions as Sequences of Graph Edits
err2021-07-12
err85
errOAAI
errSacha, Mikolaj; Blaz, Mikolaj; Byrski, Piotr; Dabrowski-Tumanski, Pawel; Chrominski, Mikolaj; Loska, Rafal; Wlodarczyk-Pruszynski, Pawel; Jastrzebski, Stanislaw
errShare
errSave
Planning chemical syntheses with deep neural networks and symbolic AI
err2018-03-29
err0
PREAI
errMarwin H. S. Segler; Mike Preuss; Mark P. Waller
errShare
errSave
Evolutionary Retrosynthetic Route Planning [Research Frontier]
err2024-08-01
err0
errOAAI
errZhang, Yan; He, Xiao; Gao, Shuanhu; Zhou, Aimin; Hao, Hao
errShare
errSave
Computer-Assisted Retrosynthesis Based on Molecular Similarity
err2017-11-16
err228
errOAAI
errColey, Connor W.; Rogers, Luke; Green, William H.; Jensen, Klavs F.
errShare
errSave
researcher View more