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Article

An Observation of a Very High Swelling of Bromovirus Members at Specific Ionic Strengths and pH

by
Xochitl Fabiola Segovia-González
1,
Maria Veronica Villagrana-Escareño
1,
Maricarmen Ríos-Ramírez
1,
Vianey Santiago de la Cruz
1,
Jessica Nathaly Mejía-Hernández
1,
Jose Luis Cuellar-Camacho
1,
Araceli Patrón-Soberano
2,
Richard Sportsman
3 and
Jaime Ruiz-García
1,*
1
Biologycal Physics Laboratory, Physics Institute, Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí 78000, Mexico
2
Molecular Biology Division, IPICYT, Instituto Potosino de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica A.C., San Luis Potosí 78216, Mexico
3
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1569, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Viruses 2023, 15(10), 2046; https://doi.org/10.3390/v15102046
Submission received: 31 July 2023 / Revised: 19 September 2023 / Accepted: 22 September 2023 / Published: 4 October 2023
(This article belongs to the Section Viruses of Plants, Fungi and Protozoa)
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Abstract

Cowpea chlorotic mottle virus (CCMV) and brome mosaic virus (BMV) are naked plant viruses with similar characteristics; both form a T = 3 icosahedral protein capsid and are members of the bromoviridae family. It is well known that these viruses completely disassemble and liberate their genome at a pH around 7.2 and 1 M ionic strength. However, the 1 M ionic strength condition is not present inside cells, so an important question is how these viruses deliver their genome inside cells for their viral replication. There are some studies reporting the swelling of the CCMV virus using different techniques. For example, it is reported that at a pH~7.2 and low ionic strength, the swelling observed is about 10% of the initial diameter of the virus. Furthermore, different regions within the cell are known to have different pH levels and ionic strengths. In this work, we performed several experiments at low ionic strengths of 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 and systematically increased the pH in 0.2 increments from 4.6 to 7.4. To determine the change in virus size at the different pHs and ionic strengths, we first used dynamic light scattering (DLS). Most of the experiments agree with a 10% capsid swelling under the conditions reported in previous works, but surprisingly, we found that at some particular conditions, the virus capsid swelling could be as big as 20 to 35% of the original size. These measurements were corroborated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) around the conditions where the big swelling was determined by DLS. Therefore, this big swelling could be an easier mechanism that viruses use inside the cell to deliver their genome to the cell machinery for viral replication.
Keywords: virus swelling; CCMV; BMV; dynamic light scattering (DLS); atomic force microscopy (AFM); transmission electron microscopy (TEM) virus swelling; CCMV; BMV; dynamic light scattering (DLS); atomic force microscopy (AFM); transmission electron microscopy (TEM)
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MDPI and ACS Style

Segovia-González, X.F.; Villagrana-Escareño, M.V.; Ríos-Ramírez, M.; de la Cruz, V.S.; Mejía-Hernández, J.N.; Cuellar-Camacho, J.L.; Patrón-Soberano, A.; Sportsman, R.; Ruiz-García, J. An Observation of a Very High Swelling of Bromovirus Members at Specific Ionic Strengths and pH. Viruses 2023, 15, 2046. https://doi.org/10.3390/v15102046

AMA Style

Segovia-González XF, Villagrana-Escareño MV, Ríos-Ramírez M, de la Cruz VS, Mejía-Hernández JN, Cuellar-Camacho JL, Patrón-Soberano A, Sportsman R, Ruiz-García J. An Observation of a Very High Swelling of Bromovirus Members at Specific Ionic Strengths and pH. Viruses. 2023; 15(10):2046. https://doi.org/10.3390/v15102046

Chicago/Turabian Style

Segovia-González, Xochitl Fabiola, Maria Veronica Villagrana-Escareño, Maricarmen Ríos-Ramírez, Vianey Santiago de la Cruz, Jessica Nathaly Mejía-Hernández, Jose Luis Cuellar-Camacho, Araceli Patrón-Soberano, Richard Sportsman, and Jaime Ruiz-García. 2023. "An Observation of a Very High Swelling of Bromovirus Members at Specific Ionic Strengths and pH" Viruses 15, no. 10: 2046. https://doi.org/10.3390/v15102046

APA Style

Segovia-González, X. F., Villagrana-Escareño, M. V., Ríos-Ramírez, M., de la Cruz, V. S., Mejía-Hernández, J. N., Cuellar-Camacho, J. L., Patrón-Soberano, A., Sportsman, R., & Ruiz-García, J. (2023). An Observation of a Very High Swelling of Bromovirus Members at Specific Ionic Strengths and pH. Viruses, 15(10), 2046. https://doi.org/10.3390/v15102046

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