The C-terminus of Potyviral coat proteins is pretty conserved while N-terminus is variable. What does this variability mean in terms of structure-function relationship? What are the factors involved in inducing higher variability in N-terminus of the coat protein?
It's really less of a function of what is going on at the N-terminus compared to what is happening at the C-terminus. At the C-terminus, potyviruses have motifs required for insect transmission and cell-to-cell movement. Since RdRp has an error rate of 1 mismatched base for every 10,000 bases, the chance for mutation is high. Any region that has motifs for transmission or movement is less likely to have a lasting mutation disrupting these motifs survive because it is an evolutionary dead end. http://vir.sgmjournals.org/content/87/1/225.long
The N terminal region of Coat Protein contains UTR region after coat protein and is exploited for the phylogenetics and strain identification in potyviridea like BCMV, a member of potyvirus. Siince being UTR it is highly varaible
That is not correct. The UTR (UnTranslated Region) is not part of the coat protein as it does not get translated. It is correct that the UTR is highly variable though.
I agree with Laney!
The N-terminus of coat protein is a coding region and is variable in Potyvirus coat proteins.
Yeh cp is conserved region with variation in viruses belonging to potyvirus group. But there is a utr region
Yes, coat protein is conserved region with variation among species of the Potyvirus genera. UTR or UnTranslated Region is 3' terminal region of Potyvirus genome. UTR is not a part of coat protein. 3'UTR is responsible for Potyvirus infectivity given the fact that it has a Poly(A)tail. Studies have suggested that modifications in Poly(A)tail affects infectivity of the Potyviruses.
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