Structural study of the genome ejecting system in siphoviridae phages.

Elena Orlova (primary)
Department of Biological Sciences
Birkbeck (ISMB)
Renos Savva (secondary)
Department of Biological Sciences
Birkbeck (ISMB)

Abstract

Structures of the phage tails that have the helical symmetry and the tail tip (a sensor of a specific receptor) at near-atomic resolution will allow understanding how a signal from the sensor is transmitted toward the head-to-tail interface followed by DNA ejection. Using Cryo-EM we will obtain structures illuminating mechanisms that control infection, allowing to develop biochemical means to regulate infectivity of bacteriophages and possibly synthesizing the bacterial tail-like delivery devices both for the pathogen recognition and regulation the genome packaging and delivery. Comparison with other systems will help to reveal common features between different bacteriophages, undetectable by amino acid sequence analysis.


References

1 A. Ignatiou, S. Brasilès, M. El Sadek Fadel, J. Bürger, T. Mielke, M. Topf, P.Tavares, E. V. Orlova. Structural transitions during the scaffolding-driven assembly of a viral capsid Nat Commun. 2019; 10: 4840. Published online 2019 Oct 24. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-12790-6

2 White H.E., Orlova E.V. Bacteriophages: their structural organisation and function. Chapter in the book: Bacteriophages, ed. R. Savva 2019, IntechOpen. DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.85484

3 Structural Analysis of Macromolecular Assemblies by Electron Microscopy
E. V. Orlova, H. R. Saibil
Chem Rev. 2011 Dec 14; 111(12): 7710–7748, doi: 10.1021/cr100353t

4 Villanueva, H., Javed, A., Sattar, S., Vasciaveo, S., Pinheiro, V., Savva, R., & Orlova, E. (manuscript in preparation). Multidisciplinary structural analysis of diverse picovirinae portal proteins.


BBSRC Area
Molecules, cells and industrial biotechnology
Area of Biology
MicrobiologyStructural Biology
Techniques & Approaches
BiochemistryBioinformaticsImage ProcessingMathematics / StatisticsMolecular BiologySimulation / Modelling