Structure Article Mechanism for Coordinated RNA Packaging and Genome Replication by Rotavirus Polymerase VP1 Xiaohui Lu,1,5 Sarah M. McDonald,2 M. Alejandra Tortorici,2,6 Yizhi Jane Tao,1,7 Rodrigo Vasquez-Del Carpio,2,8 Max L. Nibert,3 John T. Patton,2 and Stephen C. Harrison1,4,* 1Laboratory of Molecular Medicine, Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA 2Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA 3Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA 4Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA 5Present address: Optimal Decisions Group, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA 6Present address: Unite´ de Virologie Structurale, De´ partement de Virologie, Institut Pasteur, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France 7Present address: Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Rice University, Houston, TX 77251, USA 8Present address: Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY 10029, USA *Correspondence:
[email protected] DOI 10.1016/j.str.2008.09.006 SUMMARY reflect this particle-associated RNA synthesis mechanism (Butcher et al., 2001; Tao et al., 2002). Rotavirus RNA-dependent RNA polymerase VP1 cat- Rotaviruses, members of the Reoviridae family, are nonenvel- alyzes RNA synthesis within a subviral particle. This oped particles with three concentric protein layers surrounding activity depends on core shell protein VP2. A con- 11 segments of dsRNA (Estes and Kapikian, 2007; Prasad served sequence at the 30 end of plus-strand RNA et al., 1996). The outermost layer is shed during cell entry, result- templates is important for polymerase association ing in a transcriptionally active, double-layered particle (DLP).