Related papers: Viral genome structures are optimal for capsid ass…
We apply Landau theory of crystallization to explain and to classify the capsid structures of small viruses with spherical topology and icosahedral symmetry. We develop an explicit method which predicts the positions of centers of mass for…
Biomolecular condensates are liquid- or gel-like droplets of proteins and nucleic acids formed at least in part through liquid-liquid phase separation. Condensates enable diverse functions of cells and the pathogens that infect them,…
A coarse-grained computational model is used to investigate the effect of a fluctuating fluid membrane on the dynamics of patchy-particle assembly into virus capsid-like cores. Results from simulations for a broad range of parameters are…
We examine the role of electrostatic interactions in the assembly of empty spherical viral capsids. The charges on the protein subunits that make the viral capsid mutually interact and are expected to yield electrostatic repulsion acting…
Electrostatic interaction is the driving force for the encapsulation by virus coat proteins of nanoparticles such as quantum dots, gold particles and magnetic beads for, e.g., imaging and therapeutic purposes. In recent experimental work,…
The ability of virus shells to encapsulate a wide range of functional cargoes, especially multiple cargoes - siRNAs, enzymes, and chromophores - has made them an essential tool in biotechnology for advancing drug delivery applications and…
Understanding how highly symmetric, robust, monodisperse protein cages self-assemble can have major applications in various areas of bio-nanotechnology, such as drug delivery, biomedical imaging and gene therapy. We develop a model to…
Cowpea chlorotic mottle virus (CCMV) is a widely used model for virus replication studies. A major challenge lies in distinguishing between the roles of the interaction between coat proteins and that between the coat proteins and the viral…
The assembly and maturation of viruses with icosahedral capsids must be coordinated with icosahedral symmetry. The icosahedral symmetry imposes also the restrictions on the cooperative specific interactions between genomic RNA/DNA and coat…
In this work we study how a viral capsid can change conformation using techniques of Large Deviations Theory for stochastic differential equations. The viral capsid is a model of a complex system in which many units - the proteins forming…
Bacteriophages densely pack their long dsDNA genome inside a protein capsid. The conformation of the viral genome inside the capsid is consistent with a hexagonal liquid crystalline structure. Experiments have confirmed that the details of…
We conjecture that certain patterns (scars), theoretically and numerically predicted to be formed by electrons arranged on a sphere to minimize the repulsive Coulomb potential (the Thomson problem) and experimentally found in spherical…
We present a generic computational framework for the simulation of viral capsid assembly which is quantitative and specific. Starting from PDB files containing atomic coordinates, the algorithm builds a coarse grained description of protein…
We study the elastic properties and mechanical stability of viral capsids under external force-loading with computer simulations. Our approach allows the implementation of specific geometries corresponding to specific phages such as…
The distribution of inequivalent geometries occurring during self-assembly of the major capsid protein in thermodynamic equilibrium is determined based on a master equation approach. These results are implemented to characterize the…
The cellular uptake of nanoparticles or viruses requires that the gain of adhesion energy overcomes the cost of plasma membrane bending. It is well known that this leads to a minimal particle size for uptake. Using a simple deterministic…
By performing a comprehensive study on 1832 segments of 1212 complete genomes of viruses, we show that in viral genomes the hairpin structures of thermodynamically predicted RNA secondary structures are more abundant than expected under a…
The statistical mechanics of a treelike polymer in a confining volume is relevant to the packaging of the genome in RNA viruses. Making use of the mapping of the grand partition function of this system onto the statistical mechanics of a…
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spurred unprecedented and concerted worldwide research to curtail and eradicate this pathogen. SARS-CoV-2 has four structural proteins:…
A vital constituent of a virus is its protein shell, called the viral capsid, that encapsulates and hence provides protection for the viral genome. Viral capsids are usually spherical, and for a significant number of viruses exhibit overall…