Crystal Structure of a Nematode-Infecting Virus
Crystal structure of a nematode-infecting virus Yusong R. Guoa, Corey F. Hrycb,c, Joanita Jakanac, Hongbing Jiangd,e, David Wangd,e, Wah Chiub,c, Weiwei Zhonga, and Yizhi J. Taoa,1 aDepartment of BioSciences, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005; bGraduate Program in Structural and Computational Biology and Molecular Biophysics and cVerna and Marrs McLean Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030; and Departments of dMolecular Microbiology and ePathology and Immunology, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63110 Edited by Michael G. Rossmann, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, and approved July 25, 2014 (received for review April 22, 2014) Orsay, the first virus discovered to naturally infect Caenorhabditis addition to the viral CP, a CP–δ fusion protein, which is likely elegans or any nematode, has a bipartite, positive-sense RNA ge- generated by ribosomal frameshifting, has been detected in nome. Sequence analyses show that Orsay is related to nodavi- infected cells as well as purified viruses (7). The Orsay CP and ruses, but molecular characterizations of Orsay reveal several RdRP share up to 26–30% amino acid identity with those from δ unique features, such as the expression of a capsid–δ fusion pro- betanodaviruses in the Nodaviridae, but the protein does not tein and the use of an ATG-independent mechanism for translation have any sequence homologs in GenBank. initiation. Here we report the crystal structure of an Orsay virus- The combination of a simple multicellular host organism and a small naturally infecting virus makes C. elegans-Orsay a highly like particle assembled from recombinant capsid protein (CP).
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