DrKGC: Dynamic Subgraph Retrieval-Augmented LLMs for Knowledge Graph Completion across General and Biomedical Domains

Yongkang Xiao, Sinian Zhang, Yi Dai, Huixue Zhou, Jue Hou, Jie Ding, Rui Zhang


Abstract
Knowledge graph completion (KGC) aims to predict missing triples in knowledge graphs (KGs) by leveraging existing triples and textual information. Recently, generative large language models (LLMs) have been increasingly employed for graph tasks. However, current approaches typically encode graph context in textual form, which fails to fully exploit the potential of LLMs for perceiving and reasoning about graph structures. To address this limitation, we propose DrKGC (Dynamic Subgraph Retrieval-Augmented LLMs for Knowledge Graph Completion). DrKGC employs a flexible lightweight model training strategy to learn structural embeddings and logical rules within the KG. It then leverages a novel bottom-up graph retrieval method to extract a subgraph for each query guided by the learned rules. Finally, a graph convolutional network (GCN) adapter uses the retrieved subgraph to enhance the structural embeddings, which are then integrated into the prompt for effective LLM fine-tuning. Experimental results on two general domain benchmark datasets and two biomedical datasets demonstrate the superior performance of DrKGC. Furthermore, a realistic case study in the biomedical domain highlights its interpretability and practical utility.
Anthology ID:
2025.findings-emnlp.892
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025
Month:
November
Year:
2025
Address:
Suzhou, China
Editors:
Christos Christodoulopoulos, Tanmoy Chakraborty, Carolyn Rose, Violet Peng
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
16432–16445
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/author-page-yu-wang-polytechnic/2025.findings-emnlp.892/
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2025.findings-emnlp.892
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Yongkang Xiao, Sinian Zhang, Yi Dai, Huixue Zhou, Jue Hou, Jie Ding, and Rui Zhang. 2025. DrKGC: Dynamic Subgraph Retrieval-Augmented LLMs for Knowledge Graph Completion across General and Biomedical Domains. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025, pages 16432–16445, Suzhou, China. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
DrKGC: Dynamic Subgraph Retrieval-Augmented LLMs for Knowledge Graph Completion across General and Biomedical Domains (Xiao et al., Findings 2025)
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https://preview.aclanthology.org/author-page-yu-wang-polytechnic/2025.findings-emnlp.892.pdf
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