title: Liquid-crystalline, phage-like packing of encapsidated DNA in herpes simplex virus.
abstract: The organization of DNA within the HSV-1 capsid has been determined by cryoelectron microscopy and image reconstruction. Purified C-capsids, which are fully packaged, were compared with A-capsids, which are empty. Unlike A-capsids, C-capsids show fine striations and punctate arrays with a spacing of approximately 2.6 nm. The packaged DNA forms a uniformly dense ball, extending radially as far as the inner surface of the icosahedral (T = 16) capsid shell, whose structure is essentially identical in A-capsids and C-capsids. Thus we find no evidence for the inner T = 4 shell previously reported by Schrag et al. to be present in C-capsids. Encapsidated HSV-1 DNA closely resembles that previously visualized in bacteriophages T4 and lambda, thus supporting the idea of a close parallelism between the respective assembly pathways of a major family of animal viruses (the herpesviruses) and a major family of bacterial viruses.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Structural Biology Research, National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland 20892.
authors.forename: F P
authors.initials: FP
authors.lastname: Booy
authors.forename: W W
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Newcomb
authors.forename: B L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Trus
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: T S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Baker
authors.forename: A C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Steven
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001435:Bacteriophages / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D002213:Capsid / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D002460:Cell Line; D003196:Computer Graphics; D004279:DNA, Viral / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D005615:Freezing; D008854:Microscopy, Electron; D008961:Models, Structural; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D011487:Protein Conformation; D018139:Simplexvirus / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction
chemical_list: D004279:DNA, Viral