Strongly correlated electrostatics of viral genome packaging

Strongly correlated electrostatics of viral genome packaging.

The problem of viral packaging (condensation) and ejection from viral capsid in the presence of multivalent counterions is considered. Experiments show divalent counterions strongly influence the amount of DNA ejected from bacteriophage. In this paper, the strong electrostatic interactions between DNA molecules in the presence of multivalent counterions is investigated. It is shown that experim...

Stuffing a virus with DNA: dissecting viral genome packaging.

I t is rare that a fully functional biological system presents a simple biophysical problem. The problem of viral DNA packaging comes tantalizingly close: What forces are required to stuff double-stranded DNA of fixed length into a container of fixed volume? Now that biophysicists have developed the capability to measure such forces, theoretical solutions to this problem can be directly tested,...

Conservation of a packaging signal and the viral genome RNA packaging mechanism in alphavirus evolution.

Alphaviruses are a group of small, enveloped viruses which are widely distributed on all continents. In infected cells, alphaviruses display remarkable specificity in RNA packaging by encapsidating only their genomic RNA while avoiding packaging of the more abundant viral subgenomic (SG), cellular messenger and transfer RNAs into released virions. In this work, we demonstrate that in spite of e...

Strongly correlated electron systems.

Strongly correlated electron systems.