rna multimerisation in the dna packaging motor of bacteriophage φ29rna噬菌体φ29 multimerisation dna包装电动机.pdf

Journal of Theoretical Medicine, Vol. 6, No. 2, June 2005, 127–134 RNA multimerisation in the DNA packaging motor of bacteriophage f29 JONATHAN P. A. WOOD†, STEPHANIE A. CAPALDI‡, MARK A. ROBINSON, ANDREW J. BARON and NICOLA J. STONEHOUSE* Faculty of Biological Sciences and Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK The use of bacteriophages as experimental tools allows the investigation of interactions between components at the molecular level that are often not possible in more complex virus systems. The bacteriophage f29 acts as a molecular machine to package its own genomic DNA during viral assembly. Self-associating RNA molecules, called pRNA, have an essential role in the function of this machine. This paper reports the characterization of this self-association (which leads to multimerisation of wild-type and truncated variant pRNAs) by analytical ultracentrifugation (including determination of the partial specific volume of the pRNA), together with an investigation into the domains of the molecule important for multimerisation by the use of complementary DNA probes. Keywords: RNA; Bacteriophage f29; Molecular motor; Virus assembly; Analytical ultracentrifugation; Partial specific volume 1. Introduction protein subunits and the RNA genome results in recruitment of further subunits to enclose the RNA [1–3] Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites and have been (and the article by Stockley et al. in this issue). In cont