Structure of Dengue Virus: Implications for Flavivirus Organization, Maturation, and Fusion

Overview

Journal Cell

Publisher Cell Press

Specialty Cell Biology

Date 2002 Mar 15

PMID 11893341

Citations 695

Authors

Richard J Kuhn

Wei Zhang

Michael G Rossmann

Sergei V Pletnev

Jeroen Corver

Edith Lenches

Christopher T Jones

Suchetana Mukhopadhyay

Paul R Chipman

Ellen G Strauss

Timothy S Baker

James H Strauss

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The first structure of a flavivirus has been determined by using a combination of cryoelectron microscopy and fitting of the known structure of glycoprotein E into the electron density map. The virus core, within a lipid bilayer, has a less-ordered structure than the external, icosahedral scaffold of 90 glycoprotein E dimers. The three E monomers per icosahedral asymmetric unit do not have quasiequivalent symmetric environments. Difference maps indicate the location of the small membrane protein M relative to the overlaying scaffold of E dimers. The structure suggests that flaviviruses, and by analogy also alphaviruses, employ a fusion mechanism in which the distal beta barrels of domain II of the glycoprotein E are inserted into the cellular membrane.

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