How the phage T4 injection machinery works including energetics, forces, and dynamic pathway.

ABSTRACT: The virus bacteriophage T4, from the family Myoviridae, employs an intriguing contractile injection machine to inject its genome into the bacterium Escherichia coli Although the atomic structure of phage T4 is largely understood, the dynamics of its injection machinery remains unknown. This study contributes a system-level model describing the nonlinear dynamics of the phage T4 injection machinery interacting with a host cell. The model employs a continuum representation of the contractile sheath using elastic constants inferred from atomistic molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations. Importantly, the sheath model is coupled to component models representing the remaining structures of the virus and the host cell. The resulting system-level model captures virus-cell interactions as well as compe

SUBMITTER: Maghsoodi A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6911207 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature