Electron cryo-microscopy of Bacteriophage PR772 reveals the elusive vertex complex and the capsid architecture
- Uppsala University, Sweden
- Stockholm University, Sweden
Abstract
Bacteriophage PR772, a member of the Tectiviridae family, has a 70-nm diameter icosahedral protein capsid that encapsulates a lipid membrane, dsDNA, and various internal proteins. An icosahedrally averaged CryoEM reconstruction of the wild-type virion and a localized reconstruction of the vertex region reveal the composition and the structure of the vertex complex along with new protein conformations that play a vital role in maintaining the capsid architecture of the virion. The overall resolution of the virion is 2.75 Å, while the resolution of the protein capsid is 2.3 Å. The conventional penta-symmetron formed by the capsomeres is replaced by a large vertex complex in the pseudo T=25 capsid. All the vertices contain the host-recognition protein, P5; two of these vertices show the presence of the receptor-binding protein, P2. The 3D structure of the vertex complex shows interactions with the viral membrane, indicating a possible mechanism for viral infection.
Data availability
CryoEM Density maps and atomic models that support the findings of this study have been deposited in the Electron Microscopy Database and the Protein Databank with the accession codes EMD-4461 (Whole particle reconstruction), EMD-4462 (Vertex Complex), EMD-10237 (Localized reconstruction of the penton region), EMD-10238 (Focused Classification of the penton region) and PDB ID 6Q5U (Atomic model of the asymmetric unit).
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High resolution electron cryo-microscopy structure of the bacteriophage PR772Electron Microscopy Database, 4461.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Vetenskapsrådet (828-2012-108)
- Janos Hajdu
Vetenskapsrådet (628-2008-1109)
- Janos Hajdu
Vetenskapsrådet (822-2010-6157)
- Janos Hajdu
Vetenskapsrådet (822-2012-5260)
- Janos Hajdu
Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse (KAW-2011.081)
- Janos Hajdu
European Research Council (ERC-291602)
- Janos Hajdu
Vetenskapsrådet (349-2011-6488)
- Janos Hajdu
Vetenskapsrådet (2015-06107)
- Janos Hajdu
European Structural and Investment Funds (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000447)
- Janos Hajdu
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Sjors HW Scheres, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom
Version history
- Received: May 15, 2019
- Accepted: September 9, 2019
- Accepted Manuscript published: September 12, 2019 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: September 18, 2019 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2019, Reddy et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Electron cryo-microscopy of Bacteriophage PR772 reveals the elusive vertex complex and the capsid architecture
eLife 8:e48496.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.48496
Further reading
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- Epidemiology and Global Health
Background:
The Zanzibar archipelago of Tanzania has become a low-transmission area for Plasmodium falciparum. Despite being considered an area of pre-elimination for years, achieving elimination has been difficult, likely due to a combination of imported infections from mainland Tanzania and continued local transmission.
Methods:
To shed light on these sources of transmission, we applied highly multiplexed genotyping utilizing molecular inversion probes to characterize the genetic relatedness of 282 P. falciparum isolates collected across Zanzibar and in Bagamoyo district on the coastal mainland from 2016 to 2018.
Results:
Overall, parasite populations on the coastal mainland and Zanzibar archipelago remain highly related. However, parasite isolates from Zanzibar exhibit population microstructure due to the rapid decay of parasite relatedness over very short distances. This, along with highly related pairs within shehias, suggests ongoing low-level local transmission. We also identified highly related parasites across shehias that reflect human mobility on the main island of Unguja and identified a cluster of highly related parasites, suggestive of an outbreak, in the Micheweni district on Pemba island. Parasites in asymptomatic infections demonstrated higher complexity of infection than those in symptomatic infections, but have similar core genomes.
Conclusions:
Our data support importation as a main source of genetic diversity and contribution to the parasite population in Zanzibar, but they also show local outbreak clusters where targeted interventions are essential to block local transmission. These results highlight the need for preventive measures against imported malaria and enhanced control measures in areas that remain receptive to malaria reemergence due to susceptible hosts and competent vectors.
Funding:
This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, grants R01AI121558, R01AI137395, R01AI155730, F30AI143172, and K24AI134990. Funding was also contributed from the Swedish Research Council, Erling-Persson Family Foundation, and the Yang Fund. RV acknowledges funding from the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis (reference MR/R015600/1), jointly funded by the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), under the MRC/FCDO Concordat agreement and is also part of the EDCTP2 program supported by the European Union. RV also acknowledges funding by Community Jameel.
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- Computational and Systems Biology
- Epidemiology and Global Health
The chemical composition of foods is complex, variable, and dependent on many factors. This has a major impact on nutrition research as it foundationally affects our ability to adequately assess the actual intake of nutrients and other compounds. In spite of this, accurate data on nutrient intake are key for investigating the associations and causal relationships between intake, health, and disease risk at the service of developing evidence-based dietary guidance that enables improvements in population health. Here, we exemplify the importance of this challenge by investigating the impact of food content variability on nutrition research using three bioactives as model: flavan-3-ols, (–)-epicatechin, and nitrate. Our results show that common approaches aimed at addressing the high compositional variability of even the same foods impede the accurate assessment of nutrient intake generally. This suggests that the results of many nutrition studies using food composition data are potentially unreliable and carry greater limitations than commonly appreciated, consequently resulting in dietary recommendations with significant limitations and unreliable impact on public health. Thus, current challenges related to nutrient intake assessments need to be addressed and mitigated by the development of improved dietary assessment methods involving the use of nutritional biomarkers.
