classification and evolutionary trends of icosahedral viral capsids分类和二十面体病毒衣壳的进化趋势.pdfVIP

Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine Vol. 9, Nos. 3–4, September–December 2008, 175–181 Classification and evolutionary trends of icosahedral viral capsids Richard Kerner* ´ ` LPTMC, Universite Paris-VI-CNRS UMR 7600, Tour 24, 4-eme, Boite 121, 4 Place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France ( Received 6 January 2008; final version received 31 March 2008 ) A classification of icosahedral viral capsids is proposed. We show how the self-organization of capsids during their formation implies a definite composition of their elementary building blocks. The exact number of hexamers with three different admissible symmetries is related to capsids’ sizes, labelled by their T-numbers. Simple rules determining these numbers for each value of T are deduced and certain consequences concerning the probabilities of mutations and evolution of viruses are discussed. Keywords: viral capsid classification; self-organized agglomeration; symmetry 1. Introduction Viruses provide a spectacular example of self-organization of proteins which can build up increasingly complicated structures. The first theoretical of quantitative analysis of such processes was set forth by Eigen in his book on biological self-organization [1]. The large group of spherical viruses [2], whose protective protein shells called capsids display perfect icosahedral symmetry, is of particular interest. These geometrical structures, known to mathematicians since Coxeter’s classification [3]; are also observed in fullerenes, huge molecules composed exclusively of carbon atoms, predicted by Smalley and Kroto, and discovered in the 1980s. Since Caspar and Kl