Architecture of important plant viruses: the role of capsid protein—its assembly and architecture

This chapter introduces the composition and architecture of important plant viruses. We review many characterization techniques in order to understand the architecture of viruses with their chemical and physical information. Besides architecture, the assembly and symmetry of capsid proteins are important in understanding each viral class. Hence, the concepts of the icosahedral structure of isometric viruses and the helical structure of rod-shaped viruses are discussed along with quasi-equivalence and other structure theories as a basis for understanding the structure of plant viruses. The structure of capsid proteins and their topology (jelly roll) is also shown. Further, the bacilliform particles and helical symmetry are also detailed. The intersubunit interactions of rod-shaped and flexuous filamentous viruses are given, with an insight into intrinsically disordered domains.