Surface ultrastructure representation of bacteriophage spo1 capsid
Cryo-electron microscopy
James Conway, Structural Biology
Surface representation of the viral capsid of bacteriophage spo1, calculated from cryo-electron microscope images such as shown in the background. The capsid, of approximately 100nm diameter, expresses a variation of icosahedral geometry (specified by a triangulation number, T=16) identical to that of herpesvirus capsids - the first non-herpesvirus shown to do so. Structurally conserved features, such as this, that are shared by certain bacteriophages and animal viruses suggest that they are derived from a common ancestral virus that infected cells before the split into separate domains. For more information about this spo1 structure, see Duda et al (2006) Current Biology 16, R11-13.
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