Seminars & Events

Computing, Environment and Life Sciences
"Viral capsid self-assembly: A multidisciplinary approach"

DATE: June 19, 2012
TIME: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
SPEAKER: Mauricio Carrillo-Tripp, Associate Professor at the National Genomics for Biodiversity Laboratory (Langebio)
LOCATION: Building 240, TCS Conference Room 1404, Argonne National Laboratory
HOST: Rick Stevens

Description:
From an evolutionary point of view, Natural selection shapes the sequence, structure and biophysical properties of proteins to fit their environment. DNA contains the complete genetic information that defines the structure and function of an organism. Proteins are formed using the genetic code of the DNA (or RNA). Three different processes are responsible for the inheritance of genetic information and for its conversion from one form to another: Replication, (Reverse) Transcription and Translation. The later is true for prokaryotes and eukaryotes, however, viruses do not have the molecular machinery to accomplish them and have to hijack higher organisms through infection to replicate themselves. After host recognition, viruses insert into a cell and liberate their genome, which comes encapsidated inside a protein shell in most cases. After replication occurs, all different parts of a new virus have to come together inside the cell in a particular way. The process of viral capsid self-assembly involves multi-specific recognition interactions which are not yet well understood. A commonly accepted hypothesis states that there is a small set of residues in the protein-protein interfaces of a capsid (hot-spots) mainly responsible for the molecular mechanism by which capsid proteins can find the thermodynamically correct path to spontaneously form symmetric macrostructures. Using evolutionary and structural criteria, we have developed novel analysis and visualization bioinformatic tools for the prediction of viral hot-spots. Our theoretical results show the presence of specific network patterns, or fingerprints, and their implication in the self-assembly process is being validated in vitro. Whether a universal recognition molecular mechanism common to all virus families exists is an open question. In this seminar I will present current HPC strategies followed in order to address this.

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