Related papers: Mechanisms of virus assembly
The kinetics for the assembly of viral proteins into a population of capsids can be measured in vitro with size exclusion chromatography or dynamic light scattering, but extracting mechanistic information from these studies is challenging.…
We present a simple kinetic model for the assembly of small single-stranded RNA viruses that can be used to carry out analytical packaging contests between different types of RNA molecules. The RNA selection mechanism is purely kinetic and…
Viruses self-assemble from identical capsid proteins and their genome consisting, for example, of a long single stranded (ss) RNA. For a big class of T = 3 viruses capsid proteins have long positive N-terminal tails. We explore the role…
A big class of viruses self-assemble from a large number of identical capsid proteins with long flexible N-terminal tails and ss RNA. We study the role of the strong Coulomb interaction of positive N-terminal tails with ss RNA in the…
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) capsid proteins spontaneously assemble around the genome into a protective protein shell called the capsid, which can take on a variety of shapes broadly classified as conical, cylindrical and irregular.…
Bacterial microcompartments are large, roughly icosahedral shells that assemble around enzymes and reactants involved in certain metabolic pathways in bacteria. Motivated by microcompartment assembly, we use coarse-grained computational and…
Understanding interactions between microparticles and lipid membranes is of increasing importance, especially for unraveling the influence of microplastics on our health and environment. Here, we study how a short-ranged adhesive force…
Recent high resolution structures for viral capsids with 12, 32 and 72 subunits ($T1$, $T3$ and $T7$ viruses) have confirmed theoretical predictions of an icosadeltahedral structure with 12 subunits having five nearest neighbors (pentamers)…
We investigate the thermodynamics of complexation of functionalized charged nano-spheres with viral proteins. The physics of this problem is governed by electrostatic interaction between the proteins and the nano-sphere cores (screened by…
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 top-down approach to the study of the dynamics of icosahedral virus capsids, in which each protein is approximated by a point mass. Although this represents a rather crude coarse-graining, we argue that it highlights several…
The self-assembly of polyhedral shells, each constructed from 60 trapezoidal particles, is simulated using molecular dynamics. The spatial organization of the component particles in this shell is similar to the capsomer proteins forming the…
Single-stranded RNA viruses co-assemble their capsid with the genome and variations in capsid structures can have significant functional relevance. In particular, viruses need to respond to a dehydrating environment to prevent genomic…
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…
Realistic evolutionary fitness landscapes are notoriously difficult to construct. A recent cutting-edge model of virus assembly consists of a dodecahedral capsid with $12$ corresponding packaging signals in three affinity bands. This whole…
Highly symmetric nano-shells are found in many biological systems, such as clathrin cages and viral shells. Several studies have shown that symmetric shells appear in nature as a result of the free energy minimization of a generic…
Studying physical mechanisms and common geometric principles underlying known spherical packings is crucial for rational design of synthetic nanocontainers. Here we model the growth of small spherical shells containing n<72 identical…
Biological systems exploit self-assembly to create complex structures whose arrangements are finely controlled from molecular to mesoscopic level. Herein we report an example of using fully synthetic systems that mimic two levels of…
Many spherical viruses encapsulate their genome in protein shells with icosahedral symmetry. This process is spontaneous and driven by electrostatic interactions between positive domains on the virus coat proteins and the negative genome.…
Cells offer numerous inspiring examples where proteins and membranes combine to form complex structures that are key to intracellular compartmentalization, cargo transport, and specialization of cell morphology. Despite this wealth of…