I basically want the virus to fall apart into pieces. I want the capsid proteins to separate from the tail proteins and the DNA to all tumble out. I want all of the virus proteins, structural and DNA, simply to disassemble. If this were bacteria, I'd just use the freeze-thaw process to cause the bacteria to spill its contents into the solution it was suspended int. But apparently freeze-thaw doesn't work with viruses(?). Is there a way to do this by heating them up to a certain temperature? It is acceptable if there is a risk of proteins denaturing.
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2$\begingroup$ What is your end goal? What are you going to be doing with the lysed phages? $\endgroup$– MattDMoCommented Mar 19, 2023 at 23:18
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$\begingroup$ @MattDMo I want to know if nothing more than bacterial cytoplasm proteins, Brownian motion, and time (and perhaps some ATP) are all that are needed for viral fragments and viral DNA to spontaneously assemble in an aqueous solution into complete and active viruses. $\endgroup$– edmund sheltoCommented Mar 19, 2023 at 23:47
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1$\begingroup$ What happens when you research bacteriophage self-assembly? $\endgroup$– bob1Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 0:24
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$\begingroup$ @bob1 Thank you but I am not talking about self assembly of virion-like particles, or a hybrid mixture of some virus-like particles and other particles, or involving a functioning host cell. I want to see if the assembly of the entire native virus (at least for non-enveloped viruses) can happen in vitro completely outside of a host cell, just in solution. $\endgroup$– edmund sheltoCommented Mar 20, 2023 at 0:48
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1$\begingroup$ @edmundshelto yes... bacteriophage vlp then! What I'm suggesting you do is look at the literature and tell us what others have done, what they found, and what you plan to do. "Which Phage?" is a big part of this. This is part of the homework requirement. $\endgroup$– bob1Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 3:09
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Of the five most common bacteriophages that live in the dirt in my part of the country, though they are all genetically quite different, all of them fall into the same general bucket as far as what temperature to use, and for what length of time. The capsomers will begin to denature at temperatures above 50-60°C (122-140°F) and can fully denature at temperatures above 70-80°C (158-176°F). The timescale is in minutes. That is about as specific an answer as I can get after extensive googling. All I can do now is collect samples, create lawns on TSA plates, isolate strains, pick plaques if and when they appear, denature the plaques at different times and temperatures within the parameters mentioned above, and test to see exactly when and at what temperature the cooked plaques fail to inoculate other colonies.