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Updated: Nov 18, 2025

Highly Sensitive Assay for Measurement of Arenavirus-cell Attachment
Published on: March 2, 2016
Observation of arenavirus nucleoprotein heptamer assembly
Nicolas Papageorgiou1, Afroditi Vaitsopoulou1,2, Awa Diop1
1Laboratoire Architecture et Fonction des Macromolécules Biologiques (AFMB), Aix-Marseille University and CNRS, France.
Abstract:
Arenaviruses are enveloped viruses containing a segmented, negative, and ambisense single-stranded RNA genome wrapped with a nucleoprotein (NP). The NP is the most abundant viral protein in infected cells and plays a critical role in both replication/transcription and virion assembly. The NP associates with RNA to form a ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complex, and this implies self-assembly while the exact structure of this polymer is not yet known. Here, we report a measurement of the full-length Mopeia virus NP by negative stain transmission electron microscopy. We observed RNP complex particles with diameter 15 ± 1 nm as well as symmetric circular heptamers of the same diameter, consistent with previous observations.
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