Structural studies of human enteric adenovirus type 41

Enteric adenoviruses of serotypes 40 and 41 possess some specific structural features, one of which is the presence on the virion of two fibers of different lengths and primary sequences. These viruses are notoriously difficult to grow under laboratory conditions. In this paper the successful growth and purification of Ad41 are presented in detail. Structural Ad41 proteins were analyzed by biochemical methods, mass spectrometry, and electron microscopy (EM), in order to identify and localize them on polyacrylamide denaturing gels and to assess the proportion of short and long fibers in the virion. Surprisingly, the three proteins composing virus short and long pentons did not totally enter the denaturing polyacrylamide gels, which is probably due in part to their high pI. The pentons were separately purified and their dimensions were estimated from EM data. The EM images suggest that there are the same amounts of short and long fibers in each virion.