{"doi":"10.1128/mbio.03575-20","title":"Cryo-Electron Tomography of the Herpesvirus Procapsid Reveals Interactions of the Portal with the Scaffold and a Shift on Maturation","abstract":"Herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) infects a majority of humans, causing mostly mild disease but in some cases progressing toward life-threatening encephalitis. Understanding the life cycle of the virus is important to devise countermeasures. Production of the virion starts with the assembly of an icosahedral procapsid, which includes DNA packaging proteins at a vertex, one of which is the dodecameric portal protein. The procapsid then undergoes maturation and DNA packaging through the portal, driven by a terminase complex. We used cryo-electron tomography to visualize the portal in procapsids and compare them to mature empty capsids. We found the portal located inside one vertex interacting with the scaffold protein in the procapsid. On maturation, the scaffold is cleaved and dissociates, the capsid angularizes, and the portal moves outward, interacting closely with the capsid shell. These transformations may provide a basis for the development of drugs to prevent HSV-1 infections.","journal":"mBio","year":2021,"id":197506,"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":12,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.96,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":384123,"name":"William W. Newcomb","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":382775,"name":"Dennis C. Winkler","orcid":"0000-0003-1445-6554","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":382778,"name":"Alasdair C. Steven","orcid":"0000-0003-4104-6497","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":91663,"name":"J. Bernard Heymann","orcid":"0000-0002-8872-5326","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":565121,"name":"Michael H. C. Buch","orcid":"0000-0003-1963-6730","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":53,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:50:23.532351Z","pmid":"33727359","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":[]}