Crystal structure of the fibre head domain of the Atadenovirus Snake Adenovirus 1

PLoS One. 2014 Dec 8;9(12):e114373. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114373. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Adenoviruses are non-enveloped icosahedral viruses with trimeric fibre proteins protruding from their vertices. There are five known genera, from which only Mastadenoviruses have been widely studied. Apart from studying adenovirus as a biological model system and with a view to prevent or combat viral infection, there is a major interest in using adenovirus for vaccination, cancer therapy and gene therapy purposes. Adenoviruses from the Atadenovirus genus have been isolated from squamate reptile hosts, ruminants and birds and have a characteristic gene organization and capsid morphology. The carboxy-terminal virus-distal fibre head domains are likely responsible for primary receptor recognition. We determined the high-resolution crystal structure of the Snake Adenovirus 1 (SnAdV-1) fibre head using the multi-wavelength anomalous dispersion (MAD) method. Despite the absence of significant sequence homology, this Atadenovirus fibre head has the same beta-sandwich propeller topology as other adenovirus fibre heads. However, it is about half the size, mainly due to much shorter loops connecting the beta-strands. The detailed structure of the SnAdV-1 fibre head and other animal adenovirus fibre heads, together with the future identification of their natural receptors, may lead to the development of new strategies to target adenovirus vectors to cells of interest.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adenoviridae*
  • Animals
  • Capsid Proteins / chemistry*
  • Carrier Proteins / chemistry
  • Crystallography, X-Ray
  • Models, Molecular*
  • Protein Binding
  • Protein Conformation*
  • Protein Interaction Domains and Motifs*
  • Snakes

Substances

  • Capsid Proteins
  • Carrier Proteins
  • hexon capsid protein, Adenovirus

Grants and funding

This research was sponsored by grants BFU2011-24843 (Mark J. van Raaij), BFU2010-16382 (Carmen San Martín) and BFU2013-41249-P (Carmen San Martín) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the BioFiViNet network, grant number FIS2011-16090-E from the Spanish Ministry of Health and Social Protection (Carmen San Martín and Mark J. van Raaij). Abhimanyu K. Singh is a recipient of a pre-doctoral fellowship from La Caixa. Rosa Menéndez-Conejero held a predoctoral fellowship from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III of Spain. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.