Understanding molecular interactions between Dengue virus capsid protein (DENV-C) and cellular lipid droplets (LDs): In situ XRR insights fr

Dengue virus (DENV) is the cause of mosquito-borne dengue fever. With no effective treatments or vaccines, there is an urgent need for detailed understanding of the DENV lifecycle for devising new pathways for tackling DENV infections. Central to DENV’s lifecycle is its replication, a process that has been very recently linked with lipid droplets (LD; ubiquitous multifunctional intracellular organelles of 0.05-100 um in size), with DENV capsid proteins (DENV-C) found accumulating on LD, leading to nucleocapsid formation and viral particle self-assembly. Critically, this process is initiated by the adsorption of DENV-C onto the LD surface. As part of a recently funded 3-year £1.33m EPSRC (UK) – SFI (Ireland) project, we propose first XRR measurement of the classic Langmuir monolayer at air-water interface and their interaction with DENV-C proteins of different sequences injected in the subphase. The results will complement neutron scattering and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.