Abstract

Positive-strand RNA viruses, which can be devastating pathogens in humans, animals and plants, replicate their genomes on intracellular membranes. Here, we describe the three-dimensional ultrastructural organization of a tombusvirus replicase in yeast, a valuable model for exploring virus–host interactions. We visualized the intracellular distribution of a viral replicase protein using metal-tagging transmission electron microscopy, a highly sensitive nanotechnology whose full potential remains to be developed. These three-dimensional images show how viral replicase molecules are organized when they are incorporated into the active domains of the intracellular replication compartment. Our approach provides a means to study protein activation mechanisms in cells and to identify targets for new antiviral compounds.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-2-2017

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Journal of Cell Science, v. 130, issue 1, p. 260-268.

© 2017. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd

The copyright holder has granted the permission for posting the article here.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.181586

Funding Information

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [grant numbers BIO2012-33314 to C.R. and TIN2012-37483 to J.J.F.]; and the US National Science Foundation [grant number MCB-1122039 to P.D.N.].

Related Content

Data availability: Supplementary material movies are available at https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3159094.v1

Supplementary information: Supplementary information available online at http://jcs.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/jcs.181586.supplemental

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