Production and crystallization of virus-like particles assembled in a heterologous protein expression system

It is of considerable interest to separate the processes of viral infectivity and virion assembly. Until recently this has only been possible with viruses that could be disassembled and reassembled in vitro. Even in these cases it was difficult to establish the authenticity of reassembled capsid protein because of possible irreversible damage that may have occurred to the protein during disassembly. An ideal method for the study of virus assembly is a protein expression system in which conditions are appropriate for spontaneous particle formation from freshly synthesized polypeptides. The baculovirus expression system has proven to be an excellent means to this end. Recently, this approach has been used to study the T = 3 Flock House insect virus and it has been demonstrated that subunits with the wild-type protein sequence, and with site-specific mutations that prevent particle maturation, will assemble and crystallize. This same approach has now been used at Purdue to study the T = 4 Nudaurelia omega capensis insect virus. There is no cell culture system currently available for the study of NomegaV, thus the expression system provides the first opportunity to study assembly under controlled conditions.