Ambiguity of Genome Packaging Mechanism in Viruses

Author: Auroshikha Mohanty, Jitesh Kumar, Ravi Ranjan Kumar and Tushar Ranjan

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Abstract

Viruses can infect every life form, from plants, bacteria, fungi to humans and other vertebrates. To protect life from various viral diseases, it is necessary to control viruses that generally invade all life forms regularly. Among all the methods to combat viral infections, targeting the genome packaging can give us some potential control strategies against viruses. Genome packaging involves translocation and compaction of negatively charged DNA into the confined space of procapsid. The molecular machinery that executes genome packaging in viruses with outstanding accuracy needs to be explored in details. Although mechanism of genome packaging has been studied thoroughly in bacteriophages and large DNA viruses but details of genome packaging and assembly in plant viruses are unexplored yet. This mini review aims to discuss the components of genome packaging in viruses and review recent breakthroughs in this area, which will help deduce the mechanism of genome packaging among viruses.

Keywords

Genome packaging and translocation, Viruses, Packaging ATPase, ATP.

Conclusion

It appears that the packaging of the viral genome can be classified into three types. As seen in the case of small plant viruses where the packaging mechanism is further classified into subgroups based on the variations observed. It ranges from simple as in the case of type 1B and 1C to more complex ATP-dependent type 1A. In type 2 system, packaging of viral genome involves terminase assembly at cos site of the concatamer and nicks the duplex leaving the left end of the genome to be packaged. After binding to procapsid, packaging machinery docks the DNA inside the capsid through portal protein present at the vertex. In type 3, packaging machinery is phylogenetically closer to prokaryotes. It also suggests that the viral packaging mechanism has a vital role in the coevolution of bacteria. We have attempted to discuss all the three types of packaging mechanisms employed by viruses with suitable examples

References

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How to cite this article

Mohanty, A., Kumar, J., Kumar, R.R. and Ranjan, T. (2021). Ambiguity of Genome Packaging Mechanism in Viruses. Biological Forum – An International Journal, 13(3): 52-57.