Group theory of icosahedral virus capsid vibrations: a top-down approach.
We explore the use of a top-down approach to analyse the dynamics of icosahedral virus capsids and complement the information obtained from bottom-up studies of viral vibrations available in the literature. A normal mode analysis based on protein association energies is used to study the frequency spectrum, in which we reveal a universal plateau of low-frequency modes shared by a large class of Caspar-Klug capsids. These modes break icosahedral symmetry and are potentially relevant to the genome release mechanism. We comment on the role of viral tiling theory in such dynamical considerations.
Peeters
Kasper
K
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80.195, 3508 TD Utrecht, The Netherlands. kasper.peeters@aei.mpg.de
Taormina
Anne
A
D000818:Animals; D002213:Capsid / Q000737:chemistry*; D036022:Capsid Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D008954:Models, Biological; D011487:Protein Conformation; D014732:Vibration; D019065:Virus Assembly / Q000502:physiology
D036022:Capsid Proteins