PLoS ONE (Jan 2017)

Structure and properties of virions and virus-like particles derived from the coat protein of Alternanthera mosaic virus.

  • Ekaterina K Donchenko,
  • Evgeniya V Pechnikova,
  • Maryia Yu Mishyna,
  • Tatiana I Manukhova,
  • Olga S Sokolova,
  • Nikolai A Nikitin,
  • Joseph G Atabekov,
  • Olga V Karpova

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183824
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 8
p. e0183824

Abstract

Read online

Plant viruses and their virus-like particles (VLPs) have a lot of advantages for biotechnological applications including complete safety for humans. Alternanthera mosaic virus (AltMV) is a potentially promising object for design of novel materials. The 3D structures of AltMV virions and its VLPs were obtained by single particle EM at ~13Å resolution. The comparison of the reconstructions and a trypsin treatment revealed that AltMV CPs possesses a different fold in the presence (virions) and absence of viral RNA (VLPs). For the first time, the structure of morphologically similar virions and virus-like particles based on the coat protein of a helical filamentous plant virus is shown to be different. Despite this, both AltMV virions and VLPs are stable in a wide range of conditions. To provide a large amount of AltMV for biotechnology usage the isolation procedure was modified.