Carnivorous plants of the genus Nepenthes produce their own aspartic proteases,
nepenthesins, to digest prey trapped in their pitchers. Nepenthesins differ significantly in
sequence from other aspartic proteases in the animal or even plant kingdoms. This
difference, which also brings more cysteine residues into the structure of these proteases,
can be a cause of uniquely high temperature and pH stabilities of nepenthesins. Their
detailed structure characterization, however, has not previously been possible due to low …