Premium
Small‐angle X‐ray studies of the scaffold in bacteriophage λ head formation
Author(s) -
Künzler P.,
Berger H.
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
journal of applied crystallography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.429
H-Index - 162
ISSN - 1600-5767
DOI - 10.1107/s0021889878013710
Subject(s) - scaffold protein , bacteriophage , scaffold , electron micrographs , dna , crystallography , chemistry , small angle x ray scattering , shell (structure) , biophysics , capsid , materials science , scattering , composite material , biochemistry , biology , electron microscope , physics , biomedical engineering , optics , escherichia coli , medicine , signal transduction , gene
The pathway of bacteriophage λ head formation has been well characterized in vivo and in vitro (Hohn, Katsura & Hohn, 1977). First a petit λ particle consisting of a shell protein pE, a protein pNu3 and minor proteins, but lacking DNA, is formed. The pNu3‐containing structure is then converted to a structure which does not contain pNu3, and which is capable of taking up and cutting the viral DNA. The purpose of this work is to determine the scaffold structure, formed by pNu3, by small‐angle scattering techniques based on the known physico‐chemical properties of pNu3‐containing and pNu3‐lacking particles (Künzler & Hohn, 1978). The scaffold is found to be inside the protein shell but less concentrated than the 130 Å radius core reported from electron micrographs.