Adenosine triphosphatases of thermophilic archaeal double-stranded DNA viruses

Lotta J Happonen; Susanne Erdmann; Roger A Garrett; Sarah J Butcher

doi:10.1186/2045-3701-4-37

Adenosine triphosphatases of thermophilic archaeal double-stranded DNA viruses

Cell Biosci. 2014 Jul 23:4:37. doi: 10.1186/2045-3701-4-37. eCollection 2014.

Authors

Lotta J Happonen¹, Susanne Erdmann², Roger A Garrett², Sarah J Butcher³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Clinical Sciences, Division of Infection Medicine, Lund University, SE-221 84 Lund, Sweden.
² Archaea Centre, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Ole Maaløes Vej 5, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark.
³ Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki, (Viikinkaari 1), P.O. Box 65, FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland.

Abstract

Adenosine triphosphatases (ATPases) of double-stranded (ds) DNA archaeal viruses are structurally related to the AAA+ hexameric helicases and translocases. These ATPases have been implicated in viral life cycle functions such as DNA entry into the host, and viral genome packaging into preformed procapsids. We summarize bioinformatical analyses of a wide range of archaeal ATPases, and review the biochemical and structural properties of those archaeal ATPases that have measurable ATPase activity. We discuss their potential roles in genome delivery into the host, virus assembly and genome packaging in comparison to hexameric helicases and packaging motors from bacteriophages.

Keywords: ATPase; Archaeal; Genome injection; Genome packaging; MoxR ATPase; Virus.

Publication types

Review