Divergent Loop Architecture Shapes Pocket2 Variation in Shark Legumains (opens in new tab)

Legumain (AEP) is a cysteine protease with a highly conserved catalytic core but variable surface features whose evolutionary and structural diversity remain incompletely understood. To investigate how these features differ across vertebrates, we compared human legumain with six shark orthologs using sequence alignment, AlphaFold-based structural modeling, pocket detection, and qualitative docking. All shark sequences retained the canonical His-Cys dyad and {beta}-sandwich fold, and structura...