Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 18, 2025

Advancing High-Resolution Imaging of Virus Assemblies in Liquid and Ice
Published on: July 20, 2022
Cryo-EM structures of African swine fever virus topoisomerase
Yan Zhao1,2, Wenhua Kuang1, Qiyin An1,2
1Wuhan Institute of Virology, Center for Antiviral Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Importance:
African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a highly contagious virus that causes lethal hemorrhagic diseases known as African swine fever (ASF) with a case fatality rate of 100%. There is an urgent need to develop anti-ASFV drugs. We determine the first high-resolution structures of viral topoisomerase ASFV P1192R in both the closed and open C-gate forms. P1192R shows a similar overall architecture with eukaryotic and prokaryotic type II topoisomerases, which have been successful targets of many antimicrobials and anticancer drugs, with the most similarity to yeast topo II. P1192R also exhibits differences in the details of active site configuration, which are important to enzyme activity. These two structures offer useful structural information for antiviral drug design and provide structural evidence to support that eukaryotic type IIA topoisomerase likely originated from horizontal gene transfer from the virus.
More Related Videos
09:25Do's and Don'ts of Cryo-electron Microscopy: A Primer on Sample Preparation and High Quality Data Collection for Macromolecular 3D Reconstruction
Published on: January 9, 2015
08:29Averaging of Viral Envelope Glycoprotein Spikes from Electron Cryotomography Reconstructions using Jsubtomo
Published on: October 21, 2014
Related Concept Videos
DNA Topoisomerases
Types and Mechanism of action
Topoisomerases are divided into two main types. ...
Cryo-electron Microscopy
Size and Structure of Viral Genomes
Viral Structure
DNA Helicases
Translesion DNA Polymerases
TLS polymerases are found in all three domains of life - archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes. Of the different classes of TLS polymerases, members of the Y family are fitted with specialized structures that...