Energetics and Kinetic Assembly Pathways of Hepatitis B Virus Capsids in the Presence of Antivirals.

Capsid assembly modulators (CAMs) are antiviral molecules that disturb the formation of icosahedral viral capsids, in particular, those of the Hepatitis B virus (HBV). We report an integrated, physics-driven study elucidating quantitatively the effects of two classes of CAMs on the HBV capsid assembly. Time-resolved small-angle X-ray scattering measurements revealed accelerated self-assembly processes that implied the increase of subunit binding energy from 9- up to 18-fold the thermal energy due to CAMs. Cryotransmission electron microscopy images showed that both classes induce various changes in capsid morphology: from a slight elongation, unrecognized in previous work, to a strong deformation with a capsid size more than twice as large. The observed capsid morphologies were closely reproduced in coarse-grained simulations by varying the Föppl-von-Kármán number, thus pointing out the role of CAMs in altering the capsid elastic energy. Our results illuminate the mechanisms of action of CAMs on HBV capsid assembly at high spatiotemporal resolution and may bring perspectives on virus-derived nanocapsules with tunable morphologies.

Relationships between RNA topology and nucleocapsid structure in a model icosahedral virus.

The process of genome packaging in most of viruses is poorly understood, notably the role of the genome itself in the nucleocapsid structure. For simple icosahedral single-stranded RNA viruses, the branched topology due to the RNA secondary structure is thought to lower the free energy required to complete a virion. We investigate the structure of nucleocapsids packaging RNA segments with various degrees of compactness by small-angle x-ray scattering and cryotransmission electron microscopy. The structural differences are mild even though compact RNA segments lead on average to better-ordered and more uniform particles across the sample. Numerical calculations confirm that the free energy is lowered for the RNA segments displaying the larger number of branch points. The effect is, however, opposite with synthetic polyelectrolytes, in which a star topology gives rise to more disorder in the capsids than a linear topology. If RNA compactness and size account in part for the proper assembly of the nucleocapsid and the genome selectivity, other factors most likely related to the host cell environment during viral assembly must come into play as well.