Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/732
Browse
3 results
Search Results
Item Studies on the disassembly of cowpea chlorotic mottle virus(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 2001) Li, NaThe mechanism of the spherical virus disassembly has been under investigation for understanding the early events during virus infection, and eventually for helping to design reagents to block the process for releasing genetic information into host cells, thus preventing viral infection. The virus has to be stable enough to protect the genetic materials inside the virion, yet dynamic enough to release the nucleic acids to establish infection. Cowpea chlorotic mottle virus provides genetic and biochemical advantages for this purpose. The role of virus swelling for disassembly was studied based on characterization of a salt stable mutant of CCMV in vivo and in vitro. The salt stable mutant is as infectious as the wild type, swells like the wild type but shows negative signal for translation, thus swelling is not required for CCMV disassembly. The N-terminus of the coat protein on the virion is not ordered under X-ray crystallography, it is proposed to be involved in the virus disassembly. Biochemical and immunological analysis of the N-terminus shows that the N-terminus is dynamic, undergoes structural transition to the exterior of the virion presumably to form a channel on the five-fold axis during disassembly. This work will lead more biochemical studies in detail on CCMV disassembly process.Item Sustainable use of neem in Malian villages(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 1998) Jenkins, David A.Item Protein cage architectures for targeted therapeutic and imaging agent delivery(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2006) Flenniken, Michelle Lynne; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Trevor Douglas; Mark Young (co-chair)Protein cage architectures such as viral capsids, heat shock proteins, and ferritins are naturally occurring spherical structures that are potentially useful nanoscale platforms for biomedical applications. This dissertation work demonstrates the utility of protein cages including their use as therapeutic and imaging agent delivery systems. Protein cage architectures have clearly demarcated exterior, interior, and interface surfaces and their structures are known to atomic level resolution. This information is essential for the engineering of functionalized nanoparticles via both chemical and genetic modification. In the process of tailoring protein cage architectures for particular applications, fundamental information about the architectures themselves is gained. The present work describes endeavors toward the use of three different protein cage architectures, the Cowpea chlorotic mottle viral capsid (CCMV), a small heat shock protein (Hsp) architecture originally isolated from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Methanococcus jannaschii, and human H-chain ferritin, as cell-specific therapeutic and imaging agent delivery systems. Each protein cage is roughly spherical, but their sizes differ; CCMV is 28 nm in diameter, whereas Hsp and HFn are 12 nm in diameter.