Detailed chemical structure of P22 virus resolved

Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Purdue University have completed a model of unprecedented near-atomic resolution of the chemical structure of the P22 virus. The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. For nearly 30 years the laboratory of Dr. Wah Chiu, Distinguished Service Professor and Alvin Romansky Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Baylor and senior author of the paper, has been applying electron cryomicroscopy and computer reconstruction techniques to determine the 3-D structures of biological nanomachines, such as the P22 virus. This virus is a bacteriophage – a type that infects bacteria, in this case Salmonella –and has been extensively studied through genetics, biochemistry and biophysics. Nevertheless, its precise chemical structure has remained unresolved. “In 2011, we published a structure of the P22 virus that allowed us to trace out a majority of the protein...