#capsid

Meadow Plant Bug

Powerful Model

Nothing stays still. Even at the atomic level – especially at the atomic level – forces between particles keep them wriggling, even when locked in a relatively 'stable' structure. In these computer simulations, researchers mimic tiny proteins in the conical outer shell or capsid of the human immunodeficiency virus. Each pentamer (green) or hexamer (cream) structure is built from smaller building blocks called monomers – the model traces their jostling movements over nanoseconds. Simulating so many moving parts at once is a huge challenge for computer power, so the research team uses new methods to balance the ‘granularity’ of the model – how abstracted the molecular details are from real life – with how faithfully they mimic the overall biological behaviour. New algorithms using a 'coarser' granularity require less computer power (and energy), opening up the power similar simulations to more research groups worldwide.

Written by John Ankers

Video from work by Alexander J. Bryer, Juan S. Rey & Juan R. Perilla

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Nature Communications, April 2023

Capsid emotion practice.

i wanted to practice drawing emotions for Capsid,since he always smiles no matter what just to be an ass-

and because his left eye is always half closed so-

yeah-

i swear i’ll post the ref i’m just too lazy to write anything- i already got it done-

While most research into viral infections has focused on mechanisms viruses use to enter cells, less is known about the late steps in infection. The new findings were identified in reovirus, a common virus that is normally harmless but has recently been implicated as a potential cause of celiac disease.

"Our work provides compelling evidence that reoviruses, and perhaps additional distantly related viruses, require a specialized protein-folding machine expressed in cells to replicate," said Terence Dermody, M.D., chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Pitt's School of Medicine, physician-in-chief and scientific director at Children's Hospital, and the senior author on the study. "This is a pretty remarkable finding because viruses are in large part made of complex protein building blocks and we know little about how these blocks are assembled."

More information: Jonathan J. Knowlton et al, The TRiC chaperonin controls reovirus replication through outer-capsid folding, Nature Microbiology (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41564-018-0122-x