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The Ins and Outs of Herpesviral Capsids: Divergent Structures and Assembly Mechanisms across the Three Subfamilies

Human herpesviruses, classified into three subfamilies, are double-stranded DNA viruses that establish lifelong latent infections within most of the world’s population and can cause severe disease, especially in immunocompromised people. There is no cure, and current preventative and therapeutic opt...

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Autores principales: Draganova, Elizabeth B., Valentin, Jonathan, Heldwein, Ekaterina E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8539031/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34696343
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/v13101913
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author Draganova, Elizabeth B.
Valentin, Jonathan
Heldwein, Ekaterina E.
author_facet Draganova, Elizabeth B.
Valentin, Jonathan
Heldwein, Ekaterina E.
author_sort Draganova, Elizabeth B.
collection PubMed
description Human herpesviruses, classified into three subfamilies, are double-stranded DNA viruses that establish lifelong latent infections within most of the world’s population and can cause severe disease, especially in immunocompromised people. There is no cure, and current preventative and therapeutic options are limited. Therefore, understanding the biology of these viruses is essential for finding new ways to stop them. Capsids play a central role in herpesvirus biology. They are sophisticated vehicles that shelter the pressurized double-stranded-DNA genomes while ensuring their delivery to defined cellular destinations on the way in and out of the host cell. Moreover, the importance of capsids for multiple key steps in the replication cycle makes their assembly an attractive therapeutic target. Recent cryo-electron microscopy reconstructions of capsids from all three subfamilies of human herpesviruses revealed not only conserved features but also remarkable structural differences. Furthermore, capsid assembly studies have suggested subfamily-specific roles of viral capsid protein homologs. In this review, we compare capsid structures, assembly mechanisms, and capsid protein functions across human herpesvirus subfamilies, highlighting the differences.
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spelling pubmed-85390312021-10-24 The Ins and Outs of Herpesviral Capsids: Divergent Structures and Assembly Mechanisms across the Three Subfamilies Draganova, Elizabeth B. Valentin, Jonathan Heldwein, Ekaterina E. Viruses Review Human herpesviruses, classified into three subfamilies, are double-stranded DNA viruses that establish lifelong latent infections within most of the world’s population and can cause severe disease, especially in immunocompromised people. There is no cure, and current preventative and therapeutic options are limited. Therefore, understanding the biology of these viruses is essential for finding new ways to stop them. Capsids play a central role in herpesvirus biology. They are sophisticated vehicles that shelter the pressurized double-stranded-DNA genomes while ensuring their delivery to defined cellular destinations on the way in and out of the host cell. Moreover, the importance of capsids for multiple key steps in the replication cycle makes their assembly an attractive therapeutic target. Recent cryo-electron microscopy reconstructions of capsids from all three subfamilies of human herpesviruses revealed not only conserved features but also remarkable structural differences. Furthermore, capsid assembly studies have suggested subfamily-specific roles of viral capsid protein homologs. In this review, we compare capsid structures, assembly mechanisms, and capsid protein functions across human herpesvirus subfamilies, highlighting the differences. MDPI 2021-09-23 /pmc/articles/PMC8539031/ /pubmed/34696343 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/v13101913 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Draganova, Elizabeth B.
Valentin, Jonathan
Heldwein, Ekaterina E.
The Ins and Outs of Herpesviral Capsids: Divergent Structures and Assembly Mechanisms across the Three Subfamilies
title The Ins and Outs of Herpesviral Capsids: Divergent Structures and Assembly Mechanisms across the Three Subfamilies
title_full The Ins and Outs of Herpesviral Capsids: Divergent Structures and Assembly Mechanisms across the Three Subfamilies
title_fullStr The Ins and Outs of Herpesviral Capsids: Divergent Structures and Assembly Mechanisms across the Three Subfamilies
title_full_unstemmed The Ins and Outs of Herpesviral Capsids: Divergent Structures and Assembly Mechanisms across the Three Subfamilies
title_short The Ins and Outs of Herpesviral Capsids: Divergent Structures and Assembly Mechanisms across the Three Subfamilies
title_sort ins and outs of herpesviral capsids: divergent structures and assembly mechanisms across the three subfamilies
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8539031/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34696343
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/v13101913
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