Twarock Reidun
Departments of Mathematics and Biology, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK.
Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2006 Dec 15;364(1849):3357-73. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2006.1900.
Understanding the structure and life cycle of viruses is a fascinating challenge with a crucial impact on the public health sector. In the early 1960s, Caspar & Klug (Caspar & Klug 1962 Cold Spring Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol. 27, 1-24) established a theory for the prediction of the surface structures of the protein shells, called viral capsids, which encapsulate and hence provide protection for the viral genome. It is of fundamental importance in virology, with a broad spectrum of applications ranging from the image analysis and classification of experimental data to the construction of assembly models. However, experimental results have provided evidence for the fact that it is incomplete and, in particular, cannot account for the structures of Papovaviridae, which are of particular interest because they contain cancer-causing viruses. This gap has recently been closed by the viral tiling theory, which describes the locations of the protein subunits and inter-subunit bonds in viral capsids based on mathematical tools from the area of quasicrystals. The predictions and various recent applications of the new theory are presented, and it is discussed how further research along these lines may lead to new insights in virology and the design of anti-viral therapeutics.
了解病毒的结构和生命周期是一项引人入胜的挑战，对公共卫生部门有着至关重要的影响。20世纪60年代初，卡斯帕和克鲁格（Caspar & Klug，1962年，《冷泉港定量生物学研讨会》第27卷，第1 - 24页）建立了一种理论，用于预测蛋白质外壳（即病毒衣壳）的表面结构，病毒衣壳包裹病毒基因组并为其提供保护。这在病毒学中具有至关重要的意义，有着广泛的应用，从实验数据的图像分析和分类到组装模型的构建。然而，实验结果证明该理论并不完整，特别是无法解释乳头瘤病毒科的结构，乳头瘤病毒科因其包含致癌病毒而备受关注。最近，病毒平铺理论弥补了这一差距，该理论基于准晶体领域的数学工具描述了病毒衣壳中蛋白质亚基的位置和亚基间的键。本文介绍了新理论的预测及近期的各种应用，并讨论了沿着这些方向的进一步研究如何可能在病毒学和抗病毒治疗设计方面带来新的见解。
