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A series of simulations aimed at elucidating the self-assembly dynamics of spherical virus capsids is described. This little-understood phenomenon is a fascinating example of the complex processes that occur in the simplest of organisms.…
The Caspar-Klug classification of viruses whose protein shell, called viral capsid, exhibits icosahedral symmetry, has recently been extended to incorporate viruses whose capsid proteins are exclusively organised in pentamers. The approach,…
Protein nanoparticles play pivotal roles in many areas of bionanotechnology, including drug delivery, vaccination and diagnostics. These technologies require control over the distinct particle morphologies that protein nanocontainers can…
A vital constituent of a virus is its protein shell, called the viral capsid, that encapsulates and hence provides protection for the viral genome. Assembly models are developed for viral capsids built from protein building blocks that can…
In a seminal paper Caspar and Klug established a theory that provides a family of polyhedra as blueprints for the structural organisation of viral capsids. In particular, they encode the locations of the proteins in the shells that…
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…
Recent studies reveal that certain viruses package a portion of their genome in a manner that mirrors the icosahedral symmetry of the protein container, or capsid. Graph theoretical constraints forbid exact realization of icosahedral…
The proposal of this paper is to provide a simple angular random walk model to build up polypeptide structures, which encompass properties of dihedral angles of folded proteins. From this model, structures will be built with lengths ranging…
The structural organisation of the viral genome within its protein container, called the viral capsid, is an important aspect of virus architecture. Many single-stranded (ss) RNA viruses organise a significant part of their genome in a…
We show that the icosahedral packings of protein capsomeres proposed by Caspar and Klug for spherical viruses become unstable to faceting for sufficiently large virus size, in analogy with the buckling instability of disclinations in…
The packaging of genetic material within a protein shell, called the capsid, marks a pivotal step in the life cycle of numerous single-stranded RNA viruses. Understanding how hundreds, or even thousands, of proteins assemble around the…
While small single stranded viral shells encapsidate their genome spontaneously, many large viruses, such as the Herpes virus or Infectious Bursal Disease Virus (IBDV), typically require a template, consisting of either scaffolding proteins…
Atomic packing is an important metric for characterizing protein structures, as it significantly influences various features including the stability, the rate of evolution and the functional roles of proteins. Packing in protein structures…
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…
Dense packing of hydrophobic residues in the cores of globular proteins determines their stability. Recently, we have shown that protein cores possess packing fraction $\phi \approx 0.56$, which is the same as dense, random packing of amino…
Self-assembly processes are widespread in nature, and lie at the heart of many biological and physical phenomena. The characteristics of self-assembly building blocks determine the structures that they form. Two crucial properties are the…
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…
Theories of protein crystallization based on spheres that form close-packed crystals predict optimal assembly within a `slot' of second virial coefficients and enhanced assembly near the metastable liquid-vapor critical point. However, most…
Proteinaceous shells useful for various biomedical applications exhibit a wide range of anomalous structures that are fundamentally different from icosahedral viral capsids described by the Caspar-Klug paradigmatic model. Exploring the…
The self-assembly of particles into organized structures is a key feature of living organisms and a major engineering challenge. While it may proceed through the binding of perfectly matched, puzzle-pieces-like particles, many other…