title: Toroidal surface complexes of bacteriophage ϕ12 are responsible for host-cell attachment.
abstract: Cryo-electron tomography and subtomogram averaging are utilized to determine that the bacteriophage ϕ12, a member of the Cystoviridae family, contains surface complexes that are toroidal in shape, are composed of six globular domains with six-fold symmetry, and have a discrete density connecting them to the virus membrane-envelope surface. The lack of this kind of spike in a reassortant of ϕ12 demonstrates that the gene for the hexameric spike is located in ϕ12's medium length genome segment, likely to the P3 open reading frames which are the proteins involved in viral-host cell attachment. Based on this and on protein mass estimates derived from the obtained averaged structure, it is suggested that each of the globular domains is most likely composed of a total of four copies of P3a and/or P3c proteins. Our findings may have implications in the study of the evolution of the cystovirus species in regard to their host specificity.
authors.affiliation: Skirball Institute, Department of Cell Biology, New York University School of Medicine, 540 First Ave., New York, NY 10016, USA.
authors.forename: Alejandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Leo-Macias
authors.forename: Garrett
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Katz
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alimova
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Katz
authors.forename: William J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Rice
authors.forename: Ruben
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Diaz-Avalos
authors.forename: Guo-Bin
authors.initials: GB
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: David L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Stokes
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gottlieb
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001435:Bacteriophages / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D058507:Host Specificity; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D044224:Pseudomonas syringae / Q000821:virology*; D014759:Viral Envelope Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D053585:Virus Attachment
chemical_list: D014759:Viral Envelope Proteins