Roger W. Hendrix

 

Professor, Department of Biological Sciences

A340A Langley Hall

412-624-4674, 4870(fax)
rhx+@pitt.edu

http://www.pitt.edu/~biohome/Dept/Frame/Faculty/hendrix.htm

 

 

Roger Hendrix and his research group study the dsDNA bacteriophages (bacterial viruses) to investigate the mechanisms viruses use to assemble themselves accurately from several hundred protein subunits and a DNA molecule. Bacteriophages HK97 and HK022, illustrated in the figure, complete their maturation ‘dance’ by forming 420 covalent crosslinks among the 420 protein subunits of the capsid. This results in ‘viral chainmail’, a structure in which covalent rings of protein are topologically linked into a continuous fabric. These studies teach us what viruses have learned about nanofabrication over the past 3-4 billion years of evolution and also provide a scaffold for attaching molecules of interest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A negatively stained electron micrograph of the viruses. Colors on the heads illustrate the connectivity of the chainmail crosslinks.