{"doi":"10.3390/v17101384","title":"Dissecting the Unique Self-Assembly Landscape of the HIV-2 Capsid Protein","abstract":"Human immunodeficiency virus type 2 (HIV-2) is a lentivirus closely related to HIV-1 but exhibits distinct molecular and clinical features that influence viral infectivity and efficacy of antiretroviral therapy. The HIV capsid is a critical structural component with multifaceted roles during infection and mediates some of the observed divergence between HIV-1 and HIV-2. Unlike HIV-1, study of the HIV-2 capsid is limited and standard protocols for the in vitro assembly of HIV-1 capsid protein (CA) lattice structures have not been successfully translated to the HIV-2 context. This work identifies effective approaches for the assembly of the HIV-2 CA lattice and leverages this to biochemically characterize HIV-2 CA assemblies and mutant phenotypes. Our findings elaborate on the sensitivity of HIV-2 CA to chemical conditions and reveal that it assembles into a more varied spectrum of particle morphologies compared to HIV-1. Utilizing these assemblies, we tested the hypothesis that HIV-1 and HIV-2 employ divergent mechanisms to stabilize CA oligomer forms and investigate the effects of non-conserved substitutions at the CA inter-protomer interfaces. This work advances our understanding of the key biochemical determinants of HIV-2 CA assembly that are distinct from HIV-1 and may contribute to their divergent virological properties.","journal":"Viruses","year":2025,"id":578308,"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":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9612,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1485176,"name":"Pushpanjali Bhardwaj","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1334517,"name":"Faith Lozano","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":668914,"name":"Christian Freniere","orcid":"0000-0003-2846-669X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":240442,"name":"Ryan J. Malonis","orcid":"0000-0002-5759-3180","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":246111,"name":"Yong Xiong","orcid":"0000-0001-9625-9313","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":536502,"name":"M. Katherine Cook","orcid":"0000-0002-8641-820X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":83,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:58:20.638044Z","pmid":"41157654","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":[]}