Solving a Levinthal's paradox for virus assembly identifies a unique antiviral strategy.

ABSTRACT: One of the important puzzles in virology is how viruses assemble the protein containers that package their genomes rapidly and efficiently in vivo while avoiding triggering their hosts' antiviral defenses. Viral assembly appears directed toward a relatively small subset of the vast number of all possible assembly intermediates and pathways, akin to Levinthal's paradox for the folding of polypeptide chains. Using an in silico assembly model, we demonstrate that this reduction in complexity can be understood if aspects of in vivo assembly, which have mostly been neglected in in vitro experimental and theoretical modeling assembly studies, are included in the analysis. In particular, we show that the increasing viral coat protein concentration that occurs in infected cells plays unexpected an

SUBMITTER: Dykeman EC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3986145 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature