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Vaults are the largest ribonucleoprotein particles found in eukaryotic cells, with an unclear cellular function and promising applications as vehicles for drug delivery. In this article, we examine the local stiffness of individual vaults and probe their structural stability with atomic force microscopy under physiological conditions. Our data show that the barrel, the central part of the vault, governs both the stiffness and mechanical strength of these particles. In addition, we induce single-protein fractures in the barrel shell and monitor their temporal evolution. Our high-resolution atomic force microscopy topographies show that these fractures occur along the contacts between two major vault proteins and disappear over time. This unprecedented systematic self-healing mechanism, which enables these particles to reversibly adapt to certain geometric constraints, might help vaults safely pass through the nuclear pore complex and potentiate their role as self-reparable nanocontainers.

Human rhinoviruses, the major cause of mild recurrent infections of the upper respiratory tract, are small icosahedral particles. Over 100 different serotypes have been identified. The majority (91 serotypes) use intercellular adhesion molecule 1 as the cell‐attachment site; ten serotypes (the minor group) bind to members of the low‐density lipoprotein receptor. Three different crystal forms of the minor‐group human rhinovirus serotype 2 (HRV2) were obtained by the hanging‐drop vapour‐diffusion technique using ammonium sulfate and sodium/potassium phosphate as precipitants. Monoclinic crystals, space group P21, diffracted at least to 2.8 Å resolution, and two complete virus particles were located in the crystal asymmetric unit. A second type of crystals had a compact cubic like morphology and diffracted beyond 2.5 Å resolution. These crystals belong to a primitive orthorhombic space group, with unit‐cell parameters a= 309.3, b= 353.5, c= 759.6 Å, and contain one virus particle in the asymmetric unit. A third type of crystals, with a prismatic shape and belonging to space group I222, was also obtained under similar crystallization conditions. These latter crystals, with unit‐cell parameters a= 308.7, b= 352.2, c= 380.5 Å, diffracted to high resolution (beyond 1.8 Å) and contained 15 protomers per asymmetric unit; this requires that three perpendicular crystal twofold axes coincide with three of the viral particle's dyad axes.