Viruses and geometry - a new perspective on virus assembly and anti-viral therapy

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• Reidun Twarock (University of York)
• Wednesday 19 March 2014, 16:00-17:00
• Lecture room A, Watson building.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact José Cañizo.

This talk is part of the Mathematics Colloquium

A large number of human, animal and plant viruses have protein containers that provide protection for their genomes. In many cases, these containers, called capsids, exhibit symmetry, and they can therefore be modelled using techniques from group, graph and tiling theory. It has previously been assumed that their formation from the constituent protein building blocks can be fully understood as a self-assembly process in which viral genomes are only passive passengers. Our mathematical approach, in concert with techniques from bioinformatics, biophysics and experiment, provides a new perspective: It shows that, by contrast, interactions between viral genome and capsid play vital cooperative roles in this process in the case of RNA viruses, enhancing assembly efficiency and fidelity. We use the graph theoretical concept of Hamiltonian path to quantify the resulting complexity reduction in the number of assembly pathways, and discuss implications of these insights for a novel form of anti-viral therapy.

This talk is part of the Analysis Seminar series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Analysis Seminar
• Lecture room A, Watson building
• School of Mathematics Events

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