Structure analysis of the nucleoprotein of Newcastle disease virus: An insight towards its multimeric form in...

Newcastle disease virus (NDV) has been explored to a great extent to understand the biology of negative-sense RNA viruses. Nucleoprotein (N) is the most abundant protein in the virus particles, and its primary function is to encapsidate the virus genome for its transcription, replication, and packaging. Here, we report the structural investigations of the N protein of NDV (NDV-N) in solution. The N gene of NDV was cloned and expressed in E. coli as a soluble protein of ~53 kDa in size. The FE-TEM imaging of the purified NDV-N displayed a nearly spherical shape with a diameter of 28 nm and the DLS analysis of the purified NDV-N displayed a monodispersed nature, with averaged hydrodynamic radius, 26.5 nm. The conformational behavior of the NDV-N in solution was studied by SAXS analysis, which suggested two ring structures of NDV-N formed by thirteen monomeric units each. Each ring interacts with RNA molecules and forms a large molecule with a size of ~1450 kDa and are stacked on each other in a spiral arrangement. More profound knowledge of the N protein structure will help us in deciphering the control of viral RNA synthesis at the early stage of NDV life-cycle.