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Publication Abstract from PubMed

Many essential cellular processes rely on substrate rotation or translocation by a multi-subunit, ring-type NTPase. A large number of double-stranded DNA viruses, including tailed bacteriophages and herpes viruses, use a homomeric ring ATPase to processively translocate viral genomic DNA into procapsids during assembly. Our current understanding of viral DNA packaging comes from three archetypal bacteriophage systems: cos, pac and phi29. Detailed mechanistic understanding exists for pac and phi29, but not for cos. Here, we reconstituted in vitro a cos packaging system based on bacteriophage HK97 and provided a detailed biochemical and structural description. We used a photobleaching-based, single-molecule assay to determine the stoichiometry of the DNA-translocating ATPase large terminase. Crystal structures of the large terminase and DNA-recruiting small terminase, a first for a biochemically defined cos system, reveal mechanistic similarities between cos and pac systems. At the same time, mutational and biochemical analyses indicate a new regulatory mechanism for ATPase multimerization and coordination in the HK97 system. This work therefore establishes a framework for studying the evolutionary relationships between ATP-dependent DNA translocation machineries in double-stranded DNA viruses.

Structural basis of DNA packaging by a ring-type ATPase from an archetypal viral system.,Fung HKH, Grimes S, Huet A, Duda RL, Chechik M, Gault J, Robinson CV, Hendrix RW, Jardine PJ, Conway JF, Baumann CG, Antson AA Nucleic Acids Res. 2022 Aug 26;50(15):8719-8732. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkac647. PMID:35947691^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.