Reconstruction of the Disassembly Pathway of an Icosahedral Viral Capsid and Shape Determination of Two Successive Intermediates.
Viral capsids derived from an icosahedral plant virus widely used in physical and nanotechnological investigations were fully dissociated into dimers by a rapid change of pH. The process was probed in vitro at high spatiotemporal resolution by time-resolved small-angle X-ray scattering using a high brilliance synchrotron source. A powerful custom-made global fitting algorithm allowed us to reconstruct the most likely pathway parametrized by a set of stoichiometric coefficients and to determine the shape of two successive intermediates by ab initio calculations. None of these two unexpected intermediates was previously identified in self-assembly experiments, which suggests that the disassembly pathway is not a mirror image of the assembly pathway. These findings shed new light on the mechanisms and the reversibility of the assembly/disassembly of natural and synthetic virus-based systems. They also demonstrate that both the structure and dynamics of an increasing number of intermediate species become accessible to experiments.
Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Sud, CNRS , 91400 Orsay, France.
Didier
D
Law-Hine
Center for Condensed Matter Theory, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science , Bangalore, Karnataka 560012, India.
Anil K
AK
Sahoo
Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Sud, CNRS , 91400 Orsay, France.
Virginie
V
Bailleux
Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Sud, CNRS , 91400 Orsay, France.
Mehdi
M
Zeghal
European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) , 6 rue Jules Horowitz, F-38043 Grenoble Cedex, France.
Sylvain
S
Prevost
Center for Condensed Matter Theory, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science , Bangalore, Karnataka 560012, India.
Prabal K
PK
Maiti
Institute for Integrative Biology of the Cell (I2BC), CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Sud , 1 avenue de la Terrasse, 91198 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France.
Stéphane
S
Bressanelli
Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Sud, CNRS , 91400 Orsay, France.
Doru
D
Constantin
Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Université Paris-Sud, CNRS , 91400 Orsay, France.
Guillaume
G
Tresset
D002213:Capsid / Q000737:chemistry*; D012328:RNA Viruses / Q000737:chemistry*; D053838:Scattering, Small Angle; D014771:Virion / Q000737:chemistry*; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction
Virus; disassembly; kinetic pathway; modeling; time-resolved small-angle X-ray scattering