Name: G.

Srirang
Roll Number: VP22BTSC0100017

Genome packaging in Viruses

➢ Viruses are acellular microorganisms they can only reproduce in living cells because their
cellular biology is designed in such a way that they need a host cell to surview
➢ Generally tiny infectious organisms with genetic material DNA (OR) RNA some are
single stranded and some are double stranded
➢ The packaging of the genome in all the viruses follows the common step.
1. Nucleocapsid formation
2. Capsid assembly
3. Packaging of the genome

Nucleocapsid formation
➢ Nucleocapsid
is made up of nucleic acid
(RNA / DNA) which is held
with a protein called
CAPSID it acts as a coat and
protects the viral genome
➢ Capsid are
small molecular structures
made up of a single same
type of repeating protein
➢ The protein
which help in capsid
formation is protomer

➢ As shown in the above image nucleocapsid is the combination of Capsid protein

& the Genome together
Capsid assembly
 First mechanism

➢ Around a central core (such as RNA or a polymer), there are two classes of
assembly paths or mechanisms that might take place
➢ each of which results in a different assembly kinetics
➢ The capsid assembles in trajectory by a nucleation and growth mechanism.
➢ On the polymer, a small incomplete capsid forms first, and then one or a few
subunits are added reversibly at a time until the capsid is complete

Second mechanism
 ➢ In the second mechanism the subunit gets absorbed rapidly in an discontinuous and
disorder manner but happens rapidly
➢ Later an rearrangement of the capsid protein occurs
➢ Rearrangement and unbinding of some of the subunits occurs which results in the final
capsid structure
➢ In some cases binding with simultaneously annealing occurs of the excessive subunits

Packaging of the genome

➢ There are some proteins present during the formation of the viral genome
➢ Theses proteins assist the transfer of the genome towards the capsid in some cases the
virus genome has motor protein which guides the protein into the capsid
➢ The capsid proteins present has some binding site where the genome should bind in order
to enter into the viral capsid
➢ The binding site has recognition specific sequence of the genome to be packed
➢ In some bacteriophages and herpesviruses replicate their genomes as head-to-tail
concatemers
➢ It contains the same repeats of the gene sequence that has multiple copies of the viral
genome and the genome is cleaved in such a way that the genome fragment are
different but the sequence is same