Anton Arkhipov, Wouter H. Roos, Gijs J. L. Wuite, and Klaus Schulten.
Elucidating the mechanism behind irreversible deformation of viral
capsids.
Biophysical Journal, 97:2061-2069, 2009.
(PMC: 2756377)
ARKH2009A
Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has recently provided highly precise measurements of mechanical
properties of various viruses. However, molecular details underlying viral mechanics remain unresolved. Here we report
AFM nanoindentation experiments on T=4 hepatitis B virus (HBV) capsids combined with
coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations, which permit interpretation of
experimental results at the molecular level.
The force response of the indented capsid recorded in simulations agrees with
experimental observations.
In both experiments and simulations, irreversible capsid deformation is observed for deep
indentations.
Simulations show the irreversibility to be due to local bending and shifting of capsid
proteins, rather than their global rearrangement. These results emphasize the viability of
large capsid deformations without significant changes of the mutual positions of HBV
capsid proteins,
in contrast to the stiffer capsids of other viruses, which exhibit more extensive contacts
between their capsid proteins than in the case of HBV.
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