title: Modern biomolecular mass spectrometry and its role in studying virus structure, dynamics, and assembly.
abstract: Over a century since its development, the analytical technique of mass spectrometry is blooming more than ever, and applied in nearly all aspects of the natural and life sciences. In the last two decades mass spectrometry has also become amenable to the analysis of proteins and even intact protein complexes, and thus begun to make a significant impact in the field of structural biology. In this Review, we describe the emerging role of mass spectrometry, with its different technical facets, in structural biology, focusing especially on structural virology. We describe how mass spectrometry has evolved into a tool that can provide unique structural and functional information about viral-protein and protein-complex structure, conformation, assembly, and topology, extending to the direct analysis of intact virus capsids of several million Dalton in mass. Mass spectrometry is now used to address important questions in virology ranging from how viruses assemble to how they interact with their host.
authors.affiliation: Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Group, Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research and Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Utrecht, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Charlotte
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Uetrecht
authors.forename: Albert J R
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Heck
mesh_terms: D002213:Capsid / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D041961:Deuterium Exchange Measurement; D040901:Proteomics; D021241:Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization; D014764:Viral Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D014780:Viruses / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D014764:Viral Proteins