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Published on: July 16, 2012
Single hepatitis-B virus core capsid binding to individual nuclear pore complexes in Hela cells
Yoriko Lill1, Markus A Lill, Birthe Fahrenkrog
1Nano-Optics Group, National Competence Center for Research in Nanoscale Science, Institute of PhysicsK, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
Abstract:
We investigate the interaction of hepatitis B virus capsids lacking a nuclear localization signal with nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) in permeabilized HeLa cells. Confocal and wide-field optical images of the nuclear envelope show well-spaced individual NPCs. Specific interactions of capsids with single NPCs are characterized by extended residence times of capsids in the focal volume which are characterized by fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. In addition, single-capsid-tracking experiments using fast wide-field fluorescence microscopy at 50 frames/s allow us to directly observe specific binding via a dual-color colocalization of capsids and NPCs. We find that binding occurs with high probability on the nuclear-pore ring moiety, at 44 +/- 9 nm radial distance from the central axis.
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