BabyBoom: 3-Dimensional Structure-Based Ligand and Protein Interaction Prediction by Molecular Docking

Abstract

Baby Boom (BBM) is a key transcription factor that triggers embryogenesis, enhances transformation and regeneration efficiencies, and regulates developmental pathways in plants. Triggering or activating BBM in non-model crops could overcome the bottlenecks in plant breeding. Understanding BBM’s structure is critical for functional characterization and determination of interacting partners and/or ligands. The current in silico study aimed to study BBM’s sequence and conservation across all plant proteomes, predict protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions, and perform molecular docking and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation to specifically determine the binding site amino acid residues. In addition, peptide sequences that interact with BBM have also been predicted, which provide avenues for altered functional interactions and the design of peptide mimetics that can be experimentally validated for their role in tissue culture or transformation media. This novel data could pave the way for the exploitation of BBM’s potential as the master regulator of specialized plant processes such as apomixes, haploid embryogenesis, and CRISPR/Cas9 transgenic development.