Norwalk virus is the major cause of epidemic viral gastroenteritis of humans. Attempts to grow this human virus in laboratory cell lines have been unsuccessful. However, the Norwalk virus capsid protein, when expressed in insect cells infected with a recombinant baculovirus, spontaneously assembles into virus-like particles. We have determined the three-dimensional structure of baculovirus-expressed Norwalk virus using electron cryomicroscopy and computer image reconstruction to a resolution of ~22 ?. These particles, having a diameter of 380 ?, exhibit T=3 icosahedral symmetry. The 3-dimensional structure is composed of 90 dimers of the 58,000 molecular weight (58K) capsid protein, each of which forms an arch-like capsomere. The structure of the protein subunit is modular with three distinct domains. The distal globular domain that appears bilobed is connected to the lower shell domain by a central stem-like domain. We also have been able to grow crystals of the baculovirus-expressed Norwalk virus particles suitable for high resolution X-ray crystallography. These crystals diffract to a resolution of 3.2 ?. Determination of the atomic resolution structure of the Norwalk capsids using cryoEM structure for initial phasing is in progress.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Center for Research Resources (NCRR)
Type
Biotechnology Resource Grants (P41)
Project #
5P41RR002250-14
Application #
6120889
Study Section
Project Start
1998-12-01
Project End
1999-11-30
Budget Start
1998-10-01
Budget End
1999-09-30
Support Year
14
Fiscal Year
1999
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Baylor College of Medicine
Department
Type
DUNS #
074615394
City
Houston
State
TX
Country
United States
Zip Code
77030
Bucero, Marta Abril; Bajaj, Chandrajit; Mourrain, Bernard (2016) On the construction of general cubature formula by flat extensions. Linear Algebra Appl 502:104-125
Ebeida, Mohamed S; Rushdi, Ahmad A; Awad, Muhammad A et al. (2016) Disk Density Tuning of a Maximal Random Packing. Comput Graph Forum 35:259-269
Wensel, Theodore G; Zhang, Zhixian; Anastassov, Ivan A et al. (2016) Structural and molecular bases of rod photoreceptor morphogenesis and disease. Prog Retin Eye Res 55:32-51
Baker, Mariah R; Fan, Guizhen; Serysheva, Irina I (2015) Single-particle cryo-EM of the ryanodine receptor channel in an aqueous environment. Eur J Transl Myol 25:35-48
Bettadapura, Radhakrishna; Rasheed, Muhibur; Vollrath, Antje et al. (2015) PF2fit: Polar Fast Fourier Matched Alignment of Atomistic Structures with 3D Electron Microscopy Maps. PLoS Comput Biol 11:e1004289
Baranovskiy, Andrey G; Zhang, Yinbo; Suwa, Yoshiaki et al. (2015) Crystal structure of the human primase. J Biol Chem 290:5635-46
Zhang, Zhixian; He, Feng; Constantine, Ryan et al. (2015) Domain organization and conformational plasticity of the G protein effector, PDE6. J Biol Chem 290:12833-43
Baker, Mariah R; Fan, Guizhen; Serysheva, Irina I (2015) Single-Particle Cryo-EM of the Ryanodine Receptor Channel in an Aqueous Environment. Eur J Transl Myol 25:4803
Rushdi, Ahmad A; Mitchell, Scott A; Bajaj, Chandrajit L et al. (2015) Robust All-quad Meshing of Domains with Connected Regions. Procedia Eng 124:96-108
Edwards, John; Daniel, Eric; Pascucci, Valerio et al. (2015) Approximating the Generalized Voronoi Diagram of Closely Spaced Objects. Comput Graph Forum 34:299-309

Showing the most recent 10 out of 213 publications