2oh6
From Proteopedia
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The Crystal Structure of Recombinant Cypovirus Polyhedra
Overview
Cypoviruses and baculoviruses are notoriously difficult to eradicate, because the virus particles are embedded in micrometre-sized protein, crystals called polyhedra. The remarkable stability of polyhedra means, that, like bacterial spores, these insect viruses remain infectious for, years in soil. The environmental persistence of polyhedra is the cause of, significant losses in silkworm cocoon harvests but has also been exploited, against pests in biological alternatives to chemical insecticides., Although polyhedra have been extensively characterized since the early, 1900s, their atomic organization remains elusive. Here we describe the 2 A, crystal structure of both recombinant and infectious silkworm cypovirus, polyhedra determined using crystals 5-12 micrometres in diameter purified, from insect cells. These are the smallest crystals yet used for de novo, X-ray protein structure determination. We found that polyhedra are made of, trimers of the viral polyhedrin protein and contain nucleotides. Although, the shape of these building blocks is reminiscent of some capsid trimers, polyhedrin has a new fold and has evolved to assemble in vivo into, three-dimensional cubic crystals rather than icosahedral shells. The, polyhedrin trimers are extensively cross-linked in polyhedra by, non-covalent interactions and pack with an exquisite molecular, complementarity similar to that of antigen-antibody complexes. The, resulting ultrastable and sealed crystals shield the virus particles from, environmental damage. The structure suggests that polyhedra can serve as, the basis for the development of robust and versatile nanoparticles for, biotechnological applications such as microarrays and biopesticides.
About this Structure
2OH6 is a Single protein structure of sequence from Bombyx mori cypovirus 1 with , , , and as ligands. Full crystallographic information is available from OCA.
Reference
The molecular organization of cypovirus polyhedra., Coulibaly F, Chiu E, Ikeda K, Gutmann S, Haebel PW, Schulze-Briese C, Mori H, Metcalf P, Nature. 2007 Mar 1;446(7131):97-101. PMID:17330045
Page seeded by OCA on Tue Jan 29 21:11:11 2008
Categories: Bombyx mori cypovirus 1 | Single protein | Chiu, E. | Coulibaly, F. | Gutmann, S. | Haebel, P.W. | Ikeda, K. | Metcalf, P. | Mori, H. | Schulze-Briese, C. | ATP | CL | CTP | GTP | MG | Beta sandwich | Intracellular crystal | Nucleotide binding
