Related papers: Virus shapes and buckling transitions in spherical…
Recently, continuum elasticity theory has been applied to explain the shape transition of icosahedral viral capsids - single-protein-thick crystalline shells - from spherical to buckled/faceted as their radius increases through a critical…
From the analysis of sizes of approximately 130 small icosahedral viruses we find that there is a typical structural capsid protein, having a mean diameter of 5 nm and a mean thickness of 3 nm, with more than two thirds of the analyzed…
Minimal energy shapes of closed, elastic shells with twelve pentagonal disclinations introduced in otherwise hexagonally coordinated crystalline lattice are studied. The geometry and the total energy of shells are studied as a function of…
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…
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…
Epithelial monolayers are a central building block of complex organisms. Topological defects have emerged as important elements for single cell behavior in flat epithelia. Here we theoretically study such defects in a three-dimensional…
Spherical viral shells with icosahedral symmetry have been considered as quasicrystalline tilings. Similarly to known Caspar-Klug quasi-equivalence theory, the presented approach also minimizes the number of conformations necessary for the…
Icosahedral shells undergo a buckling transition as the ratio of Young's modulus to bending stiffness increases. Strong bending stiffness favors smooth, nearly spherical shapes, while weak bending stiffness leads to a sharply faceted…
We develop a clear theoretical description of radial swelling in virus-like particles which delineates the importance of electrostatic contributions to swelling in absence of any conformational changes. The model couples the elastic…
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…
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…
We model the spontaneous assembly of a capsid (a virus's closed outer shell) from many copies of identical units, using entirely irreversible steps and only information local to the growing edge. Our model is formulated in terms of (i) an…
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…
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,…
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…
We study the periodic buckling patterns that emerge when elastic shells are subjected to geometric confinement. Residual swelling provides access to range of shapes (saddles, rolled sheets, cylinders, and spherical sections) which vary in…
The use of reduced models for investigating the self-assembly dynamics underlying protein shell formation in spherical viruses is described. The spontaneous self-assembly of these polyhedral, supramolecular structures, in which icosahedral…
The formation of quasi-spherical cages from protein building blocks is a remarkable self-assembly process in many natural systems, where a small number of elementary building blocks are assembled to build a highly symmetric icosahedral…
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…
We investigate buckling of soft elastic capsules under negative pressure or for reduced capsule volume. Based on nonlinear shell theory and the assumption of a hyperelastic capsule membrane, shape equations for axisymmetric and initially…