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BIO DESIGN

pISSN 2288-6982
eISSN 2288-7105

Article

Article

Article

BioDesign 2024; 12(4): 63-69

Published online December 30, 2024

https://doi.org/10.34184/kssb.2024.12.4.63

© Korean Society for Structural Biology

AlphaFold3-predicted models of the endospore coat protein SpoIVA

Doyeon Kim1 and Nam-Chul Ha1,2,*

1Research Institute of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea
2Center for Food and Bioconvergence, Interdisciplinary Program in Agricultural Genomics, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea

Correspondence to: *hanc210@snu.ac.kr

Received: November 22, 2024; Accepted: December 10, 2024

Abstract

Bacillus cereus is a Gram-positive, aerobic bacterium that forms highly resilient endospores encased in a multi-layered protective coat. Within the endospore, SpoIVA is localized to the basement layer of the spore coat via the direct interaction with the basement-localized protein SpoVM. In this study, we employed AlphaFold3, an AI-powered structural prediction program, to model the 3D structures of SpoIVA’s functional oligomers and to predict the complex structure of SpoIVA bound to SpoVM. Our findings identified a Y-shaped symmetric structure of the SpoIVA dimer, stabilized by interactions within its C-terminal domain, with SpoVM binding specifically on the C-terminal region of SpoIVA. AlphaFold3 further predicted an ATP-dependent oligomerization structure associated with the N-terminal domain of SpoIVA. The MD simulation suggested the dynamic structural nature of the SpoIVA oligomers. These results deepen our understanding of the structural and functional relationships among these spore-forming proteins, offering new insights into their roles in endospore architecture.