ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2007
Single phage T4 DNA packaging motors exhibit large force generation, high velocity, and dynamic variability.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 123 papers.
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Who cites it
123 citing papers in PubMed, 197 citations in OpenAlex.
- Something old, something new? Herpesvirus genome packaging examined in light of lessons from the tailed bacteriophages.Journal of virology · 2026Review
- Dynamics of viral self-assembly, viral genome packaging, and virus-cell interactions studied by optical tweezers.European biophysics journal : EBJ · 2026Review
- Virus-like particles based on plant viruses and bacteriophages: emerging strategies for the delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics.Chemical science · 2026Review
- Bacteriophage T4 genome packaging: mechanism and application.EcoSal Plus · 2025Review
- Single-molecule measurements of bacteriophage lambda DNA packaging using purified terminase motor proteins and E. coli integration host factor.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Methods for Studying Motor-Driven Viral DNA Packaging in Bacteriophages phi29, Lambda, and T4 via Single DNA Molecule Manipulation and Rapid Solution Exchange.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2025Article
- Variable Assembly and Procapsid Binding of Bacteriophage P22 Terminase Subunits in Solution.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- DNA packaging by molecular motors: from bacteriophage to human chromosomes.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2024Review
- Mechanism of Viral DNA Packaging in Phage T4 Using Single-Molecule Fluorescence Approaches.Viruses · 2024Review
- Viral Genomic DNA Packaging Machinery.Sub-cellular biochemistry · 2024Review
- Optical Tweezers to Study Viruses.Sub-cellular biochemistry · 2024Review
- Role of DNA-DNA sliding friction and nonequilibrium dynamics in viral genome ejection and packaging.Nucleic acids research · 2023Article
- Review
- Terminase Subunits from the Pseudomonas-Phage E217.Journal of molecular biology · 2022Article
- Viral Small Terminase: A Divergent Structural Framework for a Conserved Biological Function.Viruses · 2022Review
- Structures of a large prolate virus capsid in unexpanded and expanded states generate insights into the icosahedral virus assembly.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Bacteriophage T4 as a nanovehicle for delivery of genes and therapeutics into human cells.Current opinion in virology · 2022Review
- Direct visualization of local activities of long DNA strands via image-time correlation.European biophysics journal : EBJ · 2021Article
- A viral genome packaging ring-ATPase is a flexibly coordinated pentamer.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Atomistic basis of force generation, translocation, and coordination in a viral genome packaging motor.Nucleic acids research · 2021Article
63 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Terminase enzyme complexes, which facilitate ATP-driven DNA packaging in phages and in many eukaryotic viruses, constitute a wide and potentially diverse family of molecular motors about which little dynamic or mechanistic information is available. Here we report optical tweezers measurements of single DNA molecule packaging dynamics in phage T4, a large, tailed Escherichia coli virus that is an important model system in molecular biology. We show that a complex is formed between the empty prohead and the large terminase protein (gp17) that can capture and begin packaging a target DNA molecule within a few seconds, thus demonstrating a distinct viral assembly pathway. The motor generates forces >60 pN, similar to those measured with phage phi29, suggesting that high force generation is a common property of viral DNA packaging motors. However, the DNA translocation rate for T4 was strikingly higher than that for phi29, averaging approximately 700 bp/s and ranging up to approximately 2,000 bp/s, consistent with packaging by phage T4 of an enormous, 171-kb genome in <10 min during viral infection and implying high ATP turnover rates of >300 s(-1). The motor velocity decreased with applied load but averaged 320 bp/s at 45 pN, indicating very high power generation. Interestingly, the motor also exhibited large dynamic changes in velocity, suggesting that it can assume multiple active conformational states gearing different translocation rates. This capability, in addition to the reversible pausing and slipping capabilities that were observed, may allow phage T4 to coordinate DNA packaging with other ongoing processes, including viral DNA transcription, recombination, and repair.
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