Kinetics of viral self-assembly: the role of ss RNA antenna

Abstract

A big class of viruses self-assemble from a large number of identical capsid proteins with long flexible N-terminal tails and ss RNA. We study the role of the strong Coulomb interaction of positive N-terminal tails with ss RNA in the kinetics of the in vitro virus self-assembly. Capsid proteins stick to unassembled chain of ss RNA (which we call "antenna") and slide on it towards the assembly site. We show that at excess of capsid proteins such one-dimensional diffusion accelerates self-assembly more than ten times. On the other hand at excess of ss RNA, antenna slows self-assembly down. Several experiments are proposed to verify the role of ss RNA antenna.

arXiv comment4 pages, 3 figures, several experiments are proposed, a new idea of experiment is added

References in corpus (3)

• Kinetics of protein-DNA interaction: facilitated target location in sequence-dependent potential
• How do proteins search for their specific sites on coiled or globular DNA
• Electrostatics and the Assembly of an RNA Virus

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• Radial distribution of RNA genome packaged inside spherical viruses
• Design principles of transcription factors with intrinsically disordered regions
• Pathways for virus assembly around nucleic acids
• The role of packaging sites in efficient and specific virus assembly