| | |
| | |
Stat |
Members: 3645 Articles: 2'504'928 Articles rated: 2609
26 April 2024 |
|
| | | |
|
Article overview
| |
|
Electrostatics and the Assembly of an RNA Virus | P. van der Schoot
; R. Bruinsma
; | Date: |
27 Oct 2004 | Subject: | Biomolecules; Subcellular Processes | q-bio.BM q-bio.SC | Abstract: | Electrostatic interactions play a central role in the assembly of single-stranded RNA viruses. Under physiological conditions of salinity and acidity, virus capsid assembly requires the presence of genomic material that is oppositely charged to the core proteins. In this paper we apply basic polymer physics and statistical mechanics methods to the self-assembly of a synthetic virus encapsidating generic polyelectrolyte molecules. We find that (i) the mean concentration of the encapsidated polyelectrolyte material depends on the surface charge density, the radius of the capsid, and the linear charge density of the polymer but neither on the salt concentration or the Kuhn length, (ii) the total charge of the capsid interior is equal but opposite to that of the empty capsid, a form of charge reversal. Unlike natural viruses, synthetic viruses are predicted not to be under an osmotic swelling pressure. The design condition that self-assembly only produces filled capsids is shown to coincide with the condition that the capsid surface charge exceeds the desorption threshold of polymer surface adsorption. We compare our results with studies on the self-assembly of both synthetic and natural viruses. | Source: | arXiv, q-bio.BM/0410032 | Other source: | [GID 144816] pmid16089786 | Services: | Forum | Review | PDF | Favorites |
|
|
No review found.
Did you like this article?
Note: answers to reviews or questions about the article must be posted in the forum section.
Authors are not allowed to review their own article. They can use the forum section.
browser Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)
|
| |
|
|
|
| News, job offers and information for researchers and scientists:
| |