Liquid-crystalline, phage-like packing of encapsidated DNA in herpes simplex virus.
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.
Booy
F P
FP
Laboratory of Structural Biology Research, National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland 20892.
Newcomb
W W
WW
Trus
B L
BL
Brown
J C
JC
Baker
T S
TS
Steven
A C
AC
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
D004279:DNA, Viral