Anyone familiar with the role-playing games Dungeons and Dragons and Munchkin need only picture the 20-sided die to understand what an organic,
icosahedral cargo container looks likesymmetrical, triangle-shaped panels folded evenly on each side.
The researchers' paper in the scientific journal Nature reports on their computational design and experimental testing of a highly stable
icosahedral protein nano-cage.
ii)
Icosahedral inclusions: 60 icosahedra in one of the cubes, each one of the remaining parts contains 4 icosahedra
Structure and Bonding in the Ubiquitous
Icosahedral Metallic Gold Cluster Au144(SR)60.
The 60 copies of the structural proteins are components of its
icosahedral shape and the non-structural proteins are responsible for the replication of viral genome in the host cells.
Kuypers (2012) describes the human BK virus as having "a non-enveloped
icosahedral capsid structure, 40 to 45 nm in diameter, containing a double-stranded DNA genome consisting of approximately 5,300 base pairs that encode six viral proteins: large tumor (LT) antigen, small tumor (st) antigen, three viral capsid proteins (VP1, VP2, VP3), and a nonstructural protein (agnoprotein)" and notes that "viral replication is initiated in the non-coding control region (NCCR) of the viral genome, a region that includes the viral promoters" (p.
Non-enveloped
icosahedral FAV-4 of the group 1 adenovirus genus in the family Adenoviridae is defined as the disease causing agent for IBH-HPS (Kumar and Chandra 2004; Aslam et al.
1) The virion is a non-enveloped 8 Kb long
icosahedral structure of 55-60 nm diameter, which forms paracrystalline arrays in the nucleus of infected cells.
The virus responsible for infectious myonecrosis (IMNV) has an
icosahedral symmetry with a diameter of around 40 nm, and its capsid is composed of 120 subunits with a floating density of 1.
They are nonenveloped, positive-sense,
icosahedral, single-stranded RNA viruses.
This is the first new class of convex, equilateral polyhedra with
icosahedral symmetry in 400 years," says UCLA neuroscientist Stan Schein.
Transmission electron microscopy of [PHI]MSP showed that the phage had an
icosahedral head, about 60 nm in diameter, and a long noncontractile tail about 125.
