Combinatorial rules of icosahedral capsid growth

2005/05/15 by Richard Kerner, Kerner, Richard
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Computer Science · #Advanced Graph Theory Research #Chemistry and Stereochemistry Studies #FOS: Biological sciences #Quantitative Methods (q-bio.QM) #q-bio.QM

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.q-bio/0505027

New version with figures included

openalex publication_date 2005/05/15 · arxiv created 2005/06/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

A model of growth of icosahedral viral capsids is proposed. It takes into account the diversity of hexamers' compositions, leading to definite capsid size. We show that the observed yield of capsid production implies a very high level of self-organization of elementary building blocks. The exact number of different protein dimers composing hexamers is related to the size of a given capsid, labeled by its T-number. Simple rules determining these numbers for each value of T are deduced and certain consequences are discussed.

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