Related papers: Therapeutic Interfering Particles Exploiting Viral…
Almost all viruses, regardless of their genomic material, produce defective viral genomes (DVG) as an unavoidable byproduct of their error-prone replication. Defective interfering (DI) elements are a subgroup of DVGs that have been shown to…
RNA viruses are a widely used tool to study evolution experimentally. Many standard protocols of virus propagation and competition are done at nominally low multiplicity of infection (m.o.i.), but lead during one passage to two or more…
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…
Multipartite viruses replicate through a puzzling evolutionary strategy. Their genome is segmented into two or more parts, and encapsidated in separate particles that appear to propagate independently. Completing the replication cycle,…
Viruses can amplify their genomes following different replication modes (RMs) ranging from the stamping machine replication (SMR) model to the geometric replication (GR) model. Different RMs are expected to produce different evolutionary…
We develop coarse-grained models that describe the dynamic encapsidation of functionalized nanoparticles by viral capsid proteins. We find that some forms of cooperative interactions between protein subunits and nanoparticles can…
Multiscale mathematical models of hepatitis C infection have been instrumental in our understanding of direct acting antivirals. These models include the mechanisms driving intracellular viral production and explicitly model the…
Defective interfering particles (DIPs) are virus-like particles that occur naturally during virus infections. These particles are defective, lacking essential genetic materials for replication, but they can interact with the wild-type virus…
Viruses display striking diversity in structure, transmission mode, immune interaction, and evolutionary behavior. Despite this diversity, viral strategies are not unconstrained. Here we present a unifying framework that treats viral…
Myriad viruses use positive-strand RNA molecules as their genomes. Far from being only a repository of genetic material, viral RNA performs numerous other functions mediated by its physical structure and chemical properties. In this…
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…
Single-stranded (ss) RNA viruses self-assemble spontaneously in solutions that contain the viral RNA genome molecules and the viral capsid proteins. The self-assembly of empty capsids can be understood on the basis of free energy…
Single-stranded (ss) RNA viruses self-assemble spontaneously in solutions that contain the viral RNA genome molecules and viral capsid proteins. The self-assembly of empty capsids can be understood on the basis of free energy minimization.…
Simple RNA viruses self-assemble spontaneously and encapsulate their genome into a shell called the capsid. This process is mainly driven by the attractive electrostatic interaction between the positive charges on capsid proteins and the…
Viruses are submicroscopic agents that can infect all kinds of lifeforms and use their hosts' living cells to replicate themselves. Despite having some of the simplest genetic structures among all living beings, viruses are highly…
Cross-protection, which refers to a process whereby artificially inoculating a plant with a mild strain provides protection against a more aggressive isolate of the virus, is known to be an effective tool of disease control in plants. In…
During the lifecycle of many single-stranded RNA viruses, including many human pathogens, a protein shell called the capsid spontaneously assembles around the viral genome. Understanding the mechanisms by which capsid proteins selectively…
Capsids of many viruses assemble around nucleic acids or other polymers. Understanding how the properties of the packaged polymer affect the assembly process could promote biomedical efforts to prevent viral assembly or nanomaterials…
We propose a description for the quasi-equilibrium self-assembly of small, single-stranded (ss) RNA viruses whose capsid proteins (CPs) have flexible, positively charged, disordered tails that associate with the negatively charged RNA…
When highly active antiretroviral therapy is administered for long periods of time to HIV-1 infected patients, most patients achieve viral loads that are ``undetectable'' by standard assay (i.e., HIV-1 RNA $ < 50$ copies/ml). Yet despite…