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Physical Virology with Atomic Force and Fluorescence Microscopies: Stability, Disassembly and Genome Release

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Physical Virology

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Biophysics ((BIOPHYSICS,volume 24))

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Abstract

The core of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is a nanometric tip mounted at the extreme of a microcantilever that scans the surface where the virus particles are adsorbed. Beyond obtaining nanometric resolution of individual viruses in liquid environment, AFM allows the manipulation of single particles, the exploration of virus biomechanics and to monitor assembly/disassembly processes, including genome release in real time. This chapter starts providing some inputs about virus adsorption on surfaces and imaging, including an example of tip dilation artifacts. Later, we exemplify how to monitor the effects of changing the chemical environment of the liquid cell on TGEV coronavirus particles. We go on by describing approaches to study genome release, aging, and multilayered viruses with single indentation and mechanical fatigue assays. The chapter ends explaining an AFM/fluorescence combination to study the influence of crowding on GFP within P22 bacteriophage capsids.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge to support by grants received from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation projects (FIS2017-89549-R, FIS2017-90701-REDT and PID2021-126608OB-I00) and the Human Frontiers Science Program (HFSPO RGP0012/2018). IFIMAC is a Center of Excellence “María de Maeztu”. J.R.C. acknowledges the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-113287RB-I00) and the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid (P2018/NMT-4389).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Física de La Materia Condensada, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28044, Madrid, Spain

    María Jesús Rodríguez-Espinosa, Miguel Cantero, Klara Strobl, Alejandro Díez-Martínez, Manuel Jiménez-Zaragoza, Alvaro Ortega-Esteban & Pedro José de Pablo

  2. Department of Structure of Macromolecules, Centro Nacional de Biotecnología, (CNB–CSIC), Darwin 3, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    María Jesús Rodríguez-Espinosa

  3. Department of Theoretical Physics of Condensed Matter, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Cantoblanco Campus, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    Pablo Ibáñez

  4. AFMB UMR 7257, Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, Marseille, France

    Natalia Martín-González

  5. Solid Condensed Matter Institute IFIMAC, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 28049, Madrid, Spain

    Pedro José de Pablo

Authors
  1. María Jesús Rodríguez-Espinosa
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  2. Miguel Cantero
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  3. Klara Strobl
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  4. Pablo Ibáñez
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  5. Alejandro Díez-Martínez
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  6. Natalia Martín-González
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  7. Manuel Jiménez-Zaragoza
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  8. Alvaro Ortega-Esteban
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  9. Pedro José de Pablo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pedro José de Pablo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosí, Mexico

    Mauricio Comas-Garcia

  2. Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosí, Mexico

    Sergio Rosales-Mendoza

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Rodríguez-Espinosa, M.J. et al. (2023). Physical Virology with Atomic Force and Fluorescence Microscopies: Stability, Disassembly and Genome Release. In: Comas-Garcia, M., Rosales-Mendoza, S. (eds) Physical Virology. Springer Series in Biophysics, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36815-8_10

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