Question

Short Answer 6

You are interested in whether the virus impacts any part of a cell’s cytoskeleton. What are three experiments you would carry out to study this? Be specific with the different cytoskeletal components

Answer 1

The cell cytoskeleton is basically composed of actin or microfilaments, intermediate filaments and microtubules. If a virus is impacting the cells cytoskeleton then the following experiments can be carried out:

1. Perform an immunoprecipitation of the viral protein and detect which cytoskeletal element it is affecting by adding various cytoskeletal antibodies.

2. Send this immunoprecipitated blot for proteomic analysis. From this you will get a rough idea about which all proteins involved in the cytoskeleton the virus is affecting.

3. If the virus is affecting the microtubular organisation, then infect the virus in actively dividing cells and observe the cells after the division. If the virus is affecting the microtubules then the chromatids wont get segregated properly and you can observe various aneuploid cells. If this is the case do yeast 2 hybrid system with the viral protein and the proteins that you get in the proteomic analysis.

4. If the virus is affecting the intermediate filaments, a simple look at the infected and the normal cells intermediary filament structure can tell us whether the intermediate filaments are getting affected because the intermediate filaments are the skeletal structure to the cell and provide the framework for the cells.

5. If the virus is affecting the actin molecules then simple do a yeast 2 hybrid system with actin, myosin and other related proteins of the microfilaments and you can say which cytoskeletal element the virus is affecting.

If you have any query kindly comment before giving thumbs up. Thank you.