title: Kinetic theory of virus capsid assembly.
abstract: A phenomenological theory is presented for the kinetics of the in vitro assembly and disassembly of icosahedral virus capsids in solutions of coat proteins. The focus is on conditions where nucleation-type processes can be ignored. We find that the kinetics of assembly is strongly concentration dependent and that the late-stage relaxation time varies as the inverse of the square of the concentration. These findings are corroborated by experimental observations on a number of viruses. Further, our theory shows that hysteresis observed in some experiments could be a direct effect of the kinetics of a high-order mass action law, not necessarily the result of a free energy barrier between assembled and disassembled states.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, POB 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: van der Schoot
authors.forename: Roya
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zandi
mesh_terms: D001703:Biophysics / Q000379:methods*; D002213:Capsid / Q000737:chemistry*; D036022:Capsid Proteins / Q000737:chemistry*; D006515:Hepatitis B virus / Q000737:chemistry; D006863:Hydrogen-Ion Concentration; D007700:Kinetics; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D013816:Thermodynamics; D013997:Time Factors; D019065:Virus Assembly; D014780:Viruses / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D036022:Capsid Proteins