How structural biology has changed our understanding of icosahedral viruses.

Autor: Comas-Garcia M; Science Department, Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.; High-Resolution Microscopy Section, Research Center for Health Sciences and Biomedicine, Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosi, Mexico.; Translational and Molecular Medicine Section, Research Center for Health Sciences and Biomedicine, Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of virology [J Virol] 2024 Oct 22; Vol. 98 (10), pp. e0111123. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Sep 18.
DOI: 10.1128/jvi.01111-23
Abstrakt: Cryo-electron microscopy and tomography have allowed us to unveil the remarkable structure of icosahedral viruses. However, in the past few years, the idea that these viruses must have perfectly symmetric virions, but in some cases, it might not be true. This has opened the door to challenging paradigms in structural virology and raised new questions about the biological implications of "unusual" or "defective" symmetries and structures. Also, the continual improvement of these technologies, coupled with more rigorous sample purification protocols, improvements in data processing, and the use of artificial intelligence, has allowed solving the structure of sub-viral particles in highly heterogeneous samples and finding novel symmetries or structural defects. In this review, I initially analyzed the case of the symmetry and composition of hepatitis B virus-produced spherical sub-viral particles. Then, I focused on Alphaviruses as an example of "imperfect" icosahedrons and analyzed how structural biology has changed our understanding of the Alphavirus assembly and some biological implications arising from these discoveries.
Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Databáze: MEDLINE