Self-assembly icosahedral viruses

The non-enveloped human viruses all have icosahedral capsids. The structural proteins undergo a self-assembly process to form capsids into which the viral nucleic acid is packaged. Most non-enveloped viruses accumulate within the cytoplasm or nucleus and are only released when the cell lyses. 

Consultation of polyhedron models revealed the structure of 1 to conform to a snub cube, one of the 13 Archimedean solids, in which the vertices of the square faces correspond to the comers of 2 and the centroids of the eight triangles that adjoin three squares correspond to the eight water molecules. Indeed, to us, the ability of six resorcin[4]arenes to self-assemble to form 1 was reminiscent of spherical viruses in which identical copies of proteins self-assemble, by way of noncovalent forces, to form viral capsids having icosahedral symmetry and a shell-like enclosure. In fact, owing to the fit displayed by its components, 1 exhibits a topology that agrees with the theory of vims shell stmcture which states that... 

From this early work on side-chain SPs, the preparation of various nonliquid crystalline systems has been prolific. One study by Sheiko and co-workers demonstrated the control of polymer backbone conformation through addition of self-assembling side-chain groups. The authors reported the use of Frechet-type aryl ether dendrons appended from either a styrenic or a methacrylic polymer backbone to form self-assembled biological mimics of the tobacco mosaic virus or the icosahedral vims, depending on the conformation of the... 

Figure 30 Quasi-equivalency of natural and synthetic supramolecular systems with cylindrical and spherical shapes (a) TMV, (b) icosahedral virus synthetic analog of (a) and (b) have been self-assembled from (c) tapered, and (d) conical monodendrons. (Courtesy of Nature 1998, 391, 8, 161. Copyright 1998 Macmillan Magazines Limited.)...

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