Periodic Table of Virus Capsids: Implications for Natural Selection and Design
Figure 2
The three virus capsid classes.
All canonical capsids (made up of trapezoidal subunits) may be built from a single type of pentamer and a repertoire of distinct hexamer shapes (colored distinctly only once in each capsid; also described in Fig. S2 in File S1). The hexamer shape is described by the number of endo angles it displays. Endo angles are depicted as bold lines within a “face” in its isolated (right) and capsid environment (left) for the first three capsid sizes in each class (excepting ).