Determination of three-dimensional low-resolution viral structure from solution x-ray scattering data.

The capsid is modeled as a region of constant electron density located between inner and outer envelopes that exhibit icosahedral symmetry. For computational purposes the envelopes are represented as truncated sums of weighted icosahedral harmonics. Methods are described for estimating the weights from x-ray solution scattering patterns based on nonlinear least squares, and two examples of the procedure, for viruses with known atomic-resolution structures, are given.