The viral fusosome: a modular machinery for cargo delivery to target cells

病毒梭体：将货物递送至靶细胞的模块化机械

• 批准号: DP230101879
• 负责人: Prof Fasseli Coulibaly
• 金额: $ 35.47万
• 依托单位: Monash University
• 依托单位国家: 澳大利亚
• 项目类别: Discovery Projects
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 澳大利亚
• 起止时间: 2023-01-01 至 2025-12-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/RGS/Web/Grants/DP230101879
• 关键词: viral; fusosome; modular; machinery; cargo

The delivery of proteins, RNA and DNA into cells is a critical process in normal cellular biology, virus infection and biotechnology applications such as gene editing. Enveloped viruses achieve this maneuver with exquisite efficiency and specificity using a complex machinery mediating their fusion with cellular membranes for stealth genome delivery. Remarkably, all characterised viral fusion proteins belong to only 3 classes defined >16 years ago and sharing surprisingly conserved mechanisms. We identified a novel class of fusion proteins with unique architecture in ubiquitous insect viruses. The Project will elucidate the structural and functional hallmarks of this fusion machinery providing a platform for its engineering.

将蛋白质、RNA和DNA递送到细胞中是正常细胞生物学、病毒感染和基因编辑等生物技术应用中的关键过程。包膜病毒通过一种复杂的机制介导它们与细胞膜的融合以实现隐蔽的基因组递送，从而以精湛的效率和特异性实现这种策略。值得注意的是，所有表征的病毒融合蛋白仅属于16年前定义的3类，并且共享令人惊讶的保守机制。我们在普遍存在的昆虫病毒中鉴定了一类具有独特结构的新型融合蛋白。该项目将阐明这种聚变机器的结构和功能特点，为其工程设计提供平台。