Problems in understanding the structure and assembly of viruses
- MIT, Cambridge, MA (United States)
Though viruses infect the cells of all groups of animals, plants, and microorganisms, their structures follow a limited number of general themes; spherical or cylindrical shells built of hundreds of repeated protein subunits enclosing a nucleic acid - DNA or RNA - genome. Since the 1960s it has been known that the protein shells of spherical viruses in fact conform to icosahedral symmetry or to subtle deviations from icosahedral symmetry. The construction of the shell lattices and the transformations they go through in the different stages of the viral life cycle are not fully understood. The shells contain the nucleic in a highly condensed state, of unknown coiling/organization. Features of the well studied bacterial viruses will be reviewed, with examples from adenoviruses, herpesviruses, poliovirus, and HIV. The emergence of new viral disease has led to increased interest in the development of agents which interfere with virus reproduction at the level of the assembly or function of the organized particle. Recently computational approaches to the problem of virus assembly have made important contributions to clarifying shell assembly processes. 1 ref.
- Research Organization:
- Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY (United States); Sloan (Alfred P.) Foundation, New York, NY (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 549010
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-970137-; TRN: 97:005298-0022
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: RECOMB `97: 1. annual conference on research in computational molecular biology, Santa Fe, NM (United States), 20-22 Jan 1997; Other Information: PBD: 1997; Related Information: Is Part Of RECOMB 97. Proceedings of the first annual international conference on computational molecular biology; PB: 370 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
BASIC STUDIES
99 MATHEMATICS
COMPUTERS
INFORMATION SCIENCE
MANAGEMENT
LAW
MISCELLANEOUS
SHELLS
SYMMETRY
SPHERICAL CONFIGURATION
VIRUSES
LIFE CYCLE
REPRODUCTION
STRUCTURE-ACTIVITY RELATIONSHIPS
TRANSFORMATIONS
VIRAL DISEASES
ETIOLOGY
THERAPY
DNA
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
RNA
PROTEINS
ADENOVIRUS
POLIO VIRUS
AIDS VIRUS
NUCLEIC ACIDS
MATHEMATICS