Understanding Phenotype Predictions
Large language models have shown remarkable capabilities in understanding and generating scientific text, but their performance on specialized microbiology tasks remains largely unexplored. This analysis evaluates how different models predict fundamental bacterial characteristics—from gram staining to pathogenicity—revealing distinct patterns in their biological knowledge representation and confidence levels.
Microbial phenotypes represent fundamental characteristics that define how bacteria interact with their environment. These traits range from structural properties like cell wall composition to functional capabilities such as oxygen requirements and pathogenicity. Understanding how well language models predict these characteristics provides insights into their biological knowledge representation.