Related papers: Mechanisms of virus assembly
DNA is an ideal candidate to organize matter on the nanoscale, primarily due to the specificity and complexity of DNA based interactions. Recent advances in this direction include the self-assembly of colloidal crystals using DNA grafted…
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…
We propose a mesoscale model structure for the coronavirus nucleocapsid, assembled from the high resolution structures of the basic building blocks of the N-protein, CryoEM imaging and mathematical constraints for an overall quasi-spherical…
Cellular functions are established through biological evolution, but are constrained by the laws of physics. For instance, the physics of protein folding limits the lengths of cellular polypeptide chains. Consequently, many cellular…
In self-assembly processes, kinetic trapping effects often hinder the formation of thermodynamically stable ordered states. In a model of viral capsid assembly and in the phase transformation of a lattice gas, we show how simulations in a…
Polymorphism has been observed in viral capsid assembly, demonstrating the ability of identical protein dimers to adopt multiple geometries under the same solution conditions. A well-studied example is the hepatitis B virus (HBV), which…
The protective capsid encasing the genetic material of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has been shown to traverse the nuclear pore complex (NPC) intact, despite exceeding the passive diffusion threshold by over three orders of magnitude.…
Viral infection requires the binding of receptors on the target cell membrane to glycoproteins, or ``spikes,'' on the viral membrane. The initial entry is usually classified as fusogenic or endocytotic. However, binding of viral spikes to…
The envelopes covering bacterial cytoplasm possess remarkable elastic properties. They are rigid enough to resist large pressures while being flexible enough to adapt to growth under environmental constraints. Similarly, the virus shells…
Assembly of protein complexes like virus shells, the centriole, the nuclear pore complex or the actin cytoskeleton is strongly determined by their spatial structure. Moreover it is becoming increasingly clear that the reversible nature of…
Virus binding to a surface results at least locally, at the contact area, in stress and potential structural perturbation of the virus cage. Here we address the question of the role of substrate-induced deformation in the overall virus…
Crystallization of proteins, specifically proteins of medical relevance, is performed for various reasons such as to understand the protein structure and to design therapies. Obtaining kinetic constants in rate laws for nucleation and…
Formation and rupture of vesicles is a fundamental process underlying diverse phenomena in biology, materials science, and biomedical applications. Vesicles form when the area of a growing disk-like membrane exceeds a critical value at…
Classical computational methods, such as molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations, have long been the standard for modeling viral structure and function. However, these approaches may overlook crucial quantum phenomena that operate at…
In the self-assembly process which drives the formation of cellular membranes, micelles, and capsids, a collection of separated subunits spontaneously binds together to form functional and more ordered structures. In this work, we study the…
Cellular internalization of nanoparticles requires the full wrapping of the nanoparticles by the cell membrane. This wrapping process can occur spontaneously if the adhesive interactions between the nanoparticles and the membranes are…
In the frame of the Landau-Ginzburg formalism we propose a minimal phenomenological model for a morphological transformation in viral capsid shells. The transformation takes place during virus maturation process which renders virus…
Protein folding, peptide aggregation and crystallization, as well as adsorption of molecules on soft or solid substrates have an essential feature in common: In all these processes, structure formation is guided by a collective, cooperative…
Self-organized complex structures in nature, e.g. viral capsids, hierarchical biopolymers, and bacterial flagella, offer efficiency, adaptability, robustness, and multi-functionality. Can we program the self-assembly of three-dimensional…
HIV-1, an enveloped RNA virus, produces viral particles that are known to be much more heterogeneous in size than is typical of non-enveloped viruses. We present here a novel strategy to study HIV-1 Viral Like Particles (VLP) assembly by…