Answer:
- Double-stranded DNA
bacteriophages and herpesviruses assemble their heads in a similar
fashion; a pre-formed precursor called a prohead or procapsid
undergoes a conformational transition to give rise to a mature head
or capsid.
- A virus-encoded
prohead or procapsid protease is often required in this maturation
process.
- Through computational
analysis, we infer homology between bacteriophage prohead proteases
(MEROPS families U9 and U35) and herpesvirus protease (MEROPS
family S21), and unify them into a procapsid protease
superfamily.
- We also extend this
superfamily to include an uncharacterized cluster of orthologs
(COG3566) and many other phage or bacteria-encoded hypothetical
proteins.
- On the basis of this
homology and the herpesvirus protease structure and catalytic
mechanism, we predict that bacteriophage prohead proteases adopt
the herpesvirus protease fold and exploit a conserved Ser and His
residue pair in catalysis.
- Our study provides
further support for the proposed evolutionary link between dsDNA
bacteriophages and herpesviruses.
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