Paramyxovirus RNA Synthesis and the Requirement for Hexamer Genome Length: the Rule of Six Revisited
Daniel Kolakofsky(University of Geneva), Thierry Pelet(University of Geneva), Dominique Garcin(University of Geneva), Stéphane Hausmann(University of Geneva), Joseph Curran(University of Geneva), Laurent Roux(University of Geneva)
Cited by 343Open Access
Abstract
The template for paramyxovirus RNA synthesis is not naked RNA but the helical nucleocapsid core of the virus, in which each nucleocapsid protein (N protein) is predicted to be associated with precisely 6 nucleotides (nt) (11). Presumably as a consequence of this association, paramyxovirus genomes are replicated efficiently only when they are a multiple of 6 nt in length, and this has been dubbed the “rule of six” (4). The structure of paramyxovirus nucleocapsids is thus central to understanding how this rule might operate.