How does your virus grow? Understanding and interfering with virus assembly

Viruses have a coat to protect their genome. For about half of the known virus families, the coat is a ‘spherical’ or icosahedral capsid. The capsid can also play a role in binding to a host cell and in movement of the virus within it. Capsids are composed of hundreds of copies of individual components that must assemble rapidly and reproducibly on a biological timescale. Assembly implies stability, but many viruses also require a ‘switch’ that renders the capsid unstable so that the viral genome can be released. Although interfering with capsid assembly and stability could be an important target for antiviral therapeutics, no such therapeutics are currently available. We are just beginning to understand how to analyze the stability and the assembly kinetics of capsids.