Difference between revisions of "Part:BBa K404150"

Revision as of 16:25, 29 October 2010

[AAV2]-VP23

Capsid

The AAV capsid consists of 60 capsid protein subunits. The three cap proteins VP1, VP2, and VP3 are encoded in an overlapping reading frame. Arranged in a stoichiometric ratio of 1:1:10, they form an icosahedral symmetry. The mRNA encoding for the cap proteins is transcribed from p40 and alternative spliced to minor and major products. Alternative splicing and translation initiation of VP2 at a nonconventional ACG initiation codon promote the expression of VP1, VP2 and VP3. The VP proteins share a common C terminus and stop codon, but begin with a different start codon. The N termini of VP1 and VP2 play important roles in infection and contain motifs that are highly homologous to a phospholipase A2 (PLA2) domain and nuclear localization signals (BR)(+).

One aim of the iGEM team Freiburg_Bioware 2010's research is on the one hand to knock down the natural tropism of the Adeno-associates virus 2 (AAV2) particles and on the other hand to specifically target tumor cells. This is achieved by genetic engineering of the virus surface. For this purpose, two different strategies were developed, including insertion of motifs into surface-exposed loops or fusion to the N-terminus of this part.

The resulting protein can be expressed in trans to the other structural and regulatory elements of the virus – the RepCap plasmid – , replacing 100 % of VP2 by start codon mutation (BBa_K404004, [AAV2]-Rep-VP13(ViralBrick-587KO-empty)_p5-TATAless). This allows titration and control of the amount of the VP2-targeting-subunit that becomes incorporated into the virus capsid.

Sequence and Features