TMV (烟草花叶病毒)

Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is named for one of the first plants in which it was found in the 1886. TMV can infect well over 350 different species of plants, many of which are favorites in home gardens such as tomatoes and potatoes. However TMV exclusively infects plants and is completely harmless for mammals. The rod-shaped virus particles (virions) of TMV measure about 300 nm x 15 nm. A single TMV particle is composed of 2,130 copies of the coat protein (CP) that envelope the RNA molecule of about 6,400 nucleotides. This single-stranded RNA encodes four genes: two replicase-associated proteins that are directly translated from the TMV RNA, and the movement protein and a coat protein that are translated from subgenomic RNAs. TMV is the textbook example for self-assembly. The assembly of the CPs (with or without RNA) to viruslike tubes is becoming an attractive way for nanoscale construction.