title: Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to study virus structure.
abstract: Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a spectroscopic technique based in the absorption of radiofrequency radiation by atomic nuclei in the presence of an external magnetic field. NMR has followed a "bottom-up" approach to solve the structures of isolated domains of viral proteins, including capsid protein subunits. NMR has been instrumental to describe conformational changes in viral proteins and nucleic acids, showing the presence of dynamic equilibria which are thought to be important at different stages of the virus life cycle; in this sense, NMR is also the only technique currently available to describe, in atomic detail, the conformational preferences of natively unfolded viral proteins. NMR has also complemented X-ray crystallography and has been combined with electron microscopy to obtain pseudo-atomic models of entire virus capsids. Finally, the joint use of liquid and solid-state NMR has allowed the identification of conformational changes in intact viral capsids on insertion in host membranes.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular, Universidad Miguel Hernández, 03202, Elche, Alicante, Spain, jlneira@umh.es.
authors.forename: José L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Neira
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D008958:Models, Molecular; D019906:Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Biomolecular; D014780:Viruses / Q000737:chemistry*