A physicist at the University of California, Riverside and her former graduate student have been able to model the formation of a new type of infectious disease.
Roya Zandi, a professor of physics and astronomy at UCR, and Siyu Li, a researcher at Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory in China, offer an overall understanding of the assembly and formation of the disease in a paper published in Viruses.
Understanding viral assembly is a key step in the therapeutic process. Experiments and simulations of Viruses such as HIV and hepatitis B have had a remarkable impact on their assembly and how to fight them. There are still unanswered questions regarding the formation of SARS- CoV-2.
The life cycle of a virus depends on the packaging of its genome into new particles. This is a difficult task for coronaviruses with their largeRNA genomes. The coronaviruses have the largest genome, which is used as their genetic material.
There are four structural proteins in SARS- CoV-2. The structural proteins M, E, and N are needed for the assembly and formation of the viral envelope. The coronavirus's lipid envelope is provided by the ERGIC, a complex membrane system. The assembly of coronaviruses is different from other viruses as it occurs at the ERGIC Membrane.
Computational studies use coarse- grained models where only details relevant at large length scales are used to mimic viral components Several virus assembly processes have been explained by the coarse- grained models.
In this paper, using coarse-grained models, we have been able to model the formation of the small RNP complex, which interacts with the M proteins that are embedded in the lipids.
Budding is when a part of the membranes starts to curve up. The model developed by Zandi and Li allowed them to explore some of the mechanisms of the cell. They were able to predict the factors that control the assembly of the viruses.
The work reveals key ingredients and components in the packaging of the long genome. Many details remain unclear as the experimental studies regarding the specific role of each of the several structuralProtein involved in the formation of viral particles are soaring.
The insight presented in the research paper and the comparison of the findings with those observed could provide some of these details.
"The physical aspects of coronaviruses assembly explored within our model are of interest not just to physical scientists beginning to apply physics-based methods to the study of coronaviruses, but also to virologists attempting to locate the keyProtein interactions in virus assembly and budding." There is a better understanding of what interactions are important for the packaging of the genome. This is the first time we've been able to get the genome condensation and the assembly at the same time.
The paper is titled "biophysical modeling of SARS-coV-2 Assembly: genome condensation and Budding."
More information: Siyu Li et al, Biophysical Modeling of SARS-CoV-2 Assembly: Genome Condensation and Budding, Viruses (2022). DOI: 10.3390/v14102089
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