Abstract
We introduce Viral Phrenology, a new scheme for understanding the genomic composition of spherical viruses based on the locations of their structural protrusions. We used icosahedral point arrays to classify 135 distinct viral capsids collected from over 600 capsids available in the VIPERdb. Using gauge points of point arrays, we found 149 unique structural protrusions. We then show how to use the locations of these protrusions to determine the genetic composition of the virus. We then show that ssDNA, dsDNA, dsRNA and ssRNA viruses use different arrangements for distributing their protrusions. We also found that Triangulation number is also partially dependent on the structural protrusions. This analysis begins to tie together Baltimore Classification and Triangulation number using point arrays.
Highlights
We studied 135 distinct spherical viruses taken from VIPERdb [1] and found that the locations of their structural protrusions often indicated their genetic composition
We have previously shown that all protruding features of spherical viruses are located on the gauge points of these arrays, though it was not yet known that these locations indicated the genomic composition
We studied the connections between key features of point arrays, including their gauge point locations and the standard characterizations of spherical viruses, including Triangulation number (T-number) and Baltimore Classification (BC)
Summary
We studied 135 distinct spherical viruses taken from VIPERdb [1] and found that the locations of their structural protrusions often indicated their genetic composition. We refer to this method of determining a virus’s genetic composition by examining the placement of its protrusions as Viral Phrenology. The structural protrusions were found by classifying the viruses using our modified fitting methods [2,3] for icosahedral point arrays [4,5]. We have previously shown that all protruding features of spherical viruses are located on the gauge points of these arrays, though it was not yet known that these locations indicated the genomic composition. We see that the Triangulation number [15] is semi-indicated by the location of protrusions
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