{"doi":"10.1093/nar/gkad1135","title":"Biophysical and structural characterization of a multifunctional viral genome packaging motor","abstract":"The large dsDNA viruses replicate their DNA as concatemers consisting of multiple covalently linked genomes. Genome packaging is catalyzed by a terminase enzyme that excises individual genomes from concatemers and packages them into preassembled procapsids. These disparate tasks are catalyzed by terminase alternating between two distinct states-a stable nuclease that excises individual genomes and a dynamic motor that translocates DNA into the procapsid. It was proposed that bacteriophage λ terminase assembles as an anti-parallel dimer-of-dimers nuclease complex at the packaging initiation site. In contrast, all characterized packaging motors are composed of five terminase subunits bound to the procapsid in a parallel orientation. Here, we describe biophysical and structural characterization of the λ holoenzyme complex assembled in solution. Analytical ultracentrifugation, small angle X-ray scattering, and native mass spectrometry indicate that 5 subunits assemble a cone-shaped terminase complex. Classification of cryoEM images reveals starfish-like rings with skewed pentameric symmetry and one special subunit. We propose a model wherein nuclease domains of two subunits alternate between a dimeric head-to-head arrangement for genome maturation and a fully parallel arrangement during genome packaging. Given that genome packaging is strongly conserved in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic viruses, the results have broad biological implications.","journal":"Nucleic Acids Research","year":2023,"id":363259,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":8,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9562,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":960531,"name":"Christal R. Davis","orcid":"0000-0002-3971-3505","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":258059,"name":"Kashyap Maruthi","orcid":"0000-0001-5290-4413","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":449894,"name":"Qin Yang","orcid":"0000-0002-0114-4407","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":318450,"name":"Michael B. Sherman","orcid":"0000-0002-3680-8066","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":254590,"name":"Michael Woodson","orcid":"0000-0002-8612-4527","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":483492,"name":"Mark A. White","orcid":"0000-0003-1057-4203","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":892260,"name":"Lohra M. Miller","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":490066,"name":"Martin F. Jarrold","orcid":"0000-0001-7084-176X","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":449895,"name":"Carlos E. Catalano","orcid":"0000-0003-2349-5758","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":254591,"name":"Marc C. Morais","orcid":"0000-0002-1057-0934","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":266753,"name":"Nikolai S. Prokhorov","orcid":"0000-0001-9621-0245","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":75,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:14:28.054440Z","pmid":"38084901","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}