Crystal structure of the African swine fever virus structural protein p35 reveals its role for core shell assembly

作者：Guobang Li, Dan Fu, Guangshun Zhang, Dongming Zhao, Mingyu Li, Xue Geng, Dongdong Sun, Yu‐Hui Wang, Cheng Chen, Peng Jiao, Lin Cao, Yu Guo, Zihe Rao · 发表于：Protein & Cell · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1007/s13238-020-00730-w · 被引用次数：16 · 研究领域：Animal Disease Management and Epidemiology、Viral Infections and Immunology Research、Viral gastroenteritis research and epidemiology

Dear Editor, The African swine fever (ASF) is a highly contagious hemorrhagic and lethal disease in domestic pigs. The ASF outbreaks of in many Asia countries, including China, Vietnam, Mongolia, and South Korea, have posed a huge threat to the pig industry. In the attempt to stop ASF from spreading further in Mainland China, more than 10 million pigs have been culled since August 2018. The causative agent for ASF is a DNA virus, African swine fever virus (ASFV). Although this deadly disease has been reported in Kenya nearly one hundred years ago, there has been no vaccine for protection from ASFV infection or effective treatments to cure ASF until now. ASFV, the only species of Asfarviridae, is a large, enveloped virus with a regular structure. The DNA genome of ASFV vary in length from approximately 170 to 193 kbp and encodes 151 to 167 proteins depending on the different viral isolates (Dixon et al., 2013). The ASFV virion comprises more than 50 polypeptides and possesses a multilayers structure: the external envelop, the icosahedral protein capsid, the inner membrane, the core shell, and the genome-containing nucleoid (Andrés et al., 1997). Since the progeny virus proliferates in the eukaryotic cytoplasm, the ASFV is categorized into the nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs) family. The external lipids envelop of the ASFV virus is finally obtained during the virus assembly process, which is originated from the host cell plasma membrane. Beneath the external lipids ...