Viral Capsid Assembly Coupled to Liquid Liquid Phase Separation — E8 Intelligence Research

Viral capsids are prime biological examples of self-limited assembly, in which assembly terminates at a well-defined size and architecture. They are protein shells that enclose viral genomes and protect them from degradation. For many virus families, experiments show that during infection, viruses cause their hosts to synthesize additional proteins that undergo liquid-liquid phase separation to form membrane-less compartments. These are known as viral factories, viroplasms, negri bodies or inclusion bodies. It is hypothesized that selective localization of viral capsid proteins and genomic material within these compartments, offers a means to avoid the host immune response and coordinate events like viral genome replication, capsid protein translation, assembly and selective genome packaging. However, the physical principles governing condensate-mediated self-limiting assembly remain incompletely understood. In this work, we present a systematic analysis of this process using coarse-gr Author: Andrew Stewart Caldin, Independent Researcher, UK. Part of the E8 Intelligence Research series. Platform: e8intelligence.com