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Updated: Apr 3, 2026

Advancing High-Resolution Imaging of Virus Assemblies in Liquid and Ice
Published on: July 20, 2022
Cryo-EM shows the polymerase structures and a nonspooled genome within a dsRNA virus
Hongrong Liu1, Lingpeng Cheng2
1College of Physics and Information Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, Hunan 410081, China. hrliu@hunnu.edu.cn lingpengcheng@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) viruses possess a segmented dsRNA genome and a number of RNA-dependent RNA polymerases (RdRps) enclosed in a capsid. Until now, the precise structures of genomes and RdRps within the capsids have been unknown. Here we report the structures of RdRps and associated RNAs within nontranscribing and transcribing cypoviruses (NCPV and TCPV, respectively), using a combination of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and a symmetry-mismatch reconstruction method. The RdRps and associated RNAs appear to exhibit a pseudo-D3 symmetric organization in both NCPV and TCPV. However, the molecular interactions between RdRps and the genomic RNA were found to differ in these states. Our work provides insight into the mechanisms of the replication and transcription in dsRNA viruses and paves a way for structural determination of lower-symmetry complexes enclosed in higher-symmetry structures.
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