1foq: Difference between revisions

[[Image:1foq.gif|left|200px]]<br /><applet load="1foq" size="350" color="white" frame="true" align="right" spinBox="true"  

Motors generating mechanical force, powered by the hydrolysis of ATP, translocate double-stranded DNA into preformed capsids (proheads) of bacterial viruses and certain animal viruses. Here we describe the motor that packages the double-stranded DNA of the Bacillus subtilis bacteriophage phi29 into a precursor capsid. We determined the structure of the head-tail connector--the central component of the phi29 DNA packaging motor--to 3.2 A resolution by means of X-ray crystallography. We then fitted the connector into the electron densities of the prohead and of the partially packaged prohead as determined using cryo-electron microscopy and image reconstruction analysis. Our results suggest that the prohead plus dodecameric connector, prohead RNA, viral ATPase and DNA comprise a rotary motor with the head-prohead RNA-ATPase complex acting as a stator, the DNA acting as a spindle, and the connector as a ball-race. The helical nature of the DNA converts the rotary action of the connector into translation of the DNA.

1FOQ is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_protein Single protein] structure of sequence from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage_phi29 Bacteriophage phi29]. Full crystallographic information is available from [http://oca.weizmann.ac.il/oca-bin/ocashort?id=1FOQ OCA].  

[[Category: Anderson, D L.]]

[[Category: Badasso, M O.]]

[[Category: Baker, T S.]]

[[Category: Jardine, P J.]]

[[Category: Leiman, P G.]]

[[Category: Morais, M C.]]

[[Category: Olson, N H.]]

[[Category: Rossmann, M G.]]

[[Category: Simpson, A A.]]

''Page seeded by [http://oca.weizmann.ac.il/oca OCA ] on Thu Feb 21 12:41:01 2008''