Rapidly evolving aphid gall effector proteins exhibit saposin-like folds
Fatema Bhinderwala, Aishwarya K. Korgaonkar, Kota N. Gopalakrishna, Thomas C. Mathers, Shuji Shigenobu, J. Fernando Bazán, Saskia A. Hogenhout, Guillermo A. Calero, Angela M. Gronenborn, David L. Stern
The paper predicts structures of rapidly evolving aphid effector proteins using Alphafold2 with custom multiple sequence alignments, revealing saposin-like folds and structural diversity.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · Sep 2, 2026Peer-reviewedMolecular Biology