Observation of arenavirus nucleoprotein heptamer assembly

Nicolas Papageorgiou (1, 2) , Afroditi Vaitsopoulou (2, 1) , Awa Diop (2, 1) , Thi Hong van Nguyen (1, 2) , Bruno Canard (1, 2) , Karine Alvarez (1, 2) , Francois Ferron (3, 1, 2)

1 AFMB - Architecture et fonction des macromolécules biologiques
2 AMU - Aix Marseille Université
3 European Virus Bioinformatics Center [Jena]

Arenaviruses are enveloped viruses containing a segmented, negative and ambisense single‐stranded RNA genome wrapped with a nucleoprotein. The nucleoprotein is the most abundant viral protein in infected cells and plays a critical role in both replication/transcription and virion assembly. The nucleoprotein associates with RNA to form a ribonucleoprotein complex, and this implies self‐assembly while the exact structure of this polymer is not yet known. Here we report a measurement of the full length Mopeia virus NP by negative stain Transmission Electron Microscopy. We observed ribonucleoprotein complex particles with diameter 15 ± 1 nm as well as symmetric circular heptamers of the same diameter, consistent with previous observations.

Keywords: Arenaviridae; Nucleoprotein; Assembly; Bunyavirales

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]

Nicolas Papageorgiou, Afroditi Vaitsopoulou, Awa Diop, Thi Hong van Nguyen, Bruno Canard, et al.. Observation of arenavirus nucleoprotein heptamer assembly. FEBS Open Bio, 2021, ⟨10.1002/2211-5463.13106⟩. ⟨hal-03143071⟩