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arXiv · 0806.1029

Group theory of icosahedral virus capsids: a dynamical top-down approach

Kasper Peeters·Anne Taormina
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Abstract

We explore the use of a top-down approach to analyse the dynamics of icosahedral virus capsids and complement the information obtained from bottom-up studies of viral vibrations available in the literature. A normal mode analysis based on protein association energies is used to study the frequency spectrum, in which we reveal a universal plateau of low-frequency modes shared by a large class of Caspar-Klug capsids. These modes break icosahedral symmetry and are potentially relevant to the genome release mechanism. We comment on the role of viral tiling theory in such dynamical considerations.

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Kasper Peeters, Anne Taormina. 2008-06-05. Group theory of icosahedral virus capsids: a dynamical top-down approach. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2008.10.019

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