{"doi":"10.1101/2023.06.15.545104","title":"Helical reconstruction of VP39 reveals principles for baculovirus nucleocapsid assembly","abstract":"Baculoviruses are insect-infecting pathogens with wide applications as biological pesticides, in vitro protein production vehicles and gene therapy tools. Its cylindrical nucleocapsid, which encapsulates and protects the circular double-stranded viral DNA encoding proteins for viral replication and entry, is formed by the highly conserved major capsid protein VP39. The mechanism for VP39 assembly remains unknown. We determined a 3.2 Å electron cryomicroscopy helical reconstruction of an infectious nucleocapsid of Autographa californica multiple nucleopolyhedrovirus, revealing how dimers of VP39 assemble into a 14-stranded helical tube. We show that VP39 comprises a unique protein fold conserved across baculoviruses, which includes a Zinc finger domain and a stabilizing intra-dimer sling. Analysis of sample polymorphism revealed that VP39 assembles in several closely-related helical geometries. This VP39 reconstruction reveals general principles for baculoviral nucleocapsid assembly.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2023,"id":399844,"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":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9519,"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":258816,"name":"Simon Jenni","orcid":"0000-0001-5722-5890","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1176563,"name":"Coby Y. Garcia","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":488807,"name":"Tran H. Nguyen","orcid":"0009-0007-6084-3017","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":108352,"name":"Xuewu Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-3634-6711","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":324094,"name":"Luke H. Chao","orcid":"0000-0002-4849-4148","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1176202,"name":"Friederike M. C. Benning","orcid":"0000-0002-1002-4204","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":101,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:20:00.023537Z","pmid":"37398449","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":[]}