Comparative Study of Thermal Remodeling of Viruses with Icosahedral and Helical Symmetry

Study of the possibilities of virions and viral proteins modifications and structural remodeling is an important problem of the modern molecular virology. A technique of heat treatment of rod-shaped tobacco mosaic virus that allowed producing structurally modified spherical particles consisting of the virus coat protein was previously developed in our laboratory. These particles possessed unique adsorption and immunogenic properties and were successfully used to develop a new candidate vaccine against rubella virus. Later, the possibility of thermal remodeling of the filamentous virions of potato virus X was demonstrated. The present work reports a comparative study of thermal remodeling of viruses with different structure belonging to various taxonomic groups. The generation of structurally modified spherical particles by the heat treatment of rod-shaped virions with helical symmetry (dolichos enation mosaic virus and barley stripe mosaic virus) has been demonstrated. The dependence of the size of spherical particles derived from dolichos enation mosaic virus on the initial virus concentration was revealed. The process of thermal remodeling of the filamentous virions and virus-like particles of alternanthera mosaic virus was studied. Heat treatment of plant viruses with icosahedral symmetry was shown to cause no morphological changes.