Structure of the siphophage neck–Tail complex suggests that conserved tail tip proteins facilitate receptor binding and tail assembly
Fig 1
Structure of the lambda virion.
(A) Left: scheme of the lambda virion. Each protein is shown using a different color and the numbers indicate the copy number of the proteins. Middle and right: surface and cut-open views of the lambda virion. The head, neck, tail tube, and tail tip are colored in grey, magenta, sky blue, and golden, respectively; one of the 3 protrusions of each ring of the tail tube is presented in blue to depict the right-handed helix assembly of the tail tube. (B) Surface and slab views of the portal (gpB), neck (gpW, and gpFII), tail terminator (gpU), and 2 tail tube (gpVN) rings at a resolution of 3.5 Å. The thick dashed line marks the capsid border, and different colors have been used for different proteins. (C) Surface and cut-open views of the tail tip with a gpVN ring. Different colors have been used for different proteins. (D, E) Superposition of the resolved models of gpI and gpH on their density maps (transparent) indicates the quality of the density maps.