Virus particle maturation: insights into elegantly programmed nanomachines
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Updated: Jun 16, 2026

Generation and Assembly of Virus-Specific Nucleocapsids of the Respiratory Syncytial Virus
Published on: July 27, 2021
1Department of Molecular Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. jackj@scripps.edu
Abstract:
Similar modes of virus maturation have been observed in dsDNA bacteriophages and the structurally related herpes viruses and some type of maturation occur in most animal viruses. Recently a variety of biophysical studies of maturation intermediates of bacteriophages P22, lambda, and HK97 have suggested an energy landscape that drives the transitions and structure-based mechanisms for its formation. Near-atomic resolution models of subunit tertiary structures in an early intermediate of bacteriophage HK97 maturation revealed a remarkable distortion of the secondary structures when compared to the mature particle. Scaffolding proteins may induce the distortion that is maintained by quaternary structure interactions following scaffold release, making the intermediate particle metastable.
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