Packaged DNA genome sets the long-range electrostatic anisotropy of a virus
Abstract
Viruses are among the most highly charged objects in biology, and electrostatic interactions permeate nearly every stage of their life cycle. At the same time, an empty icosahedral capsid is almost isotropic as far as the surrounding electrolyte is concerned---its charge distribution is anisotropic only at high multipole order, and electrostatic screening removes such anisotropy long before it can be probed at a distance. Here, we show that the packaged genome of a filled virus imparts a long-range electrostatic anisotropy that extends throughout the surrounding medium, which is not present for empty capsids. We support these findings with a novel Poisson--Boltzmann continuum theory where the orientational order of dsDNA enters through an anisotropic dielectric tensor and an inhomogeneous volume-charge distribution, which is coupled to a charge-regulating shell containing ionizable amino acid residues of the capsid proteins. The resulting electrostatic potential profiles show that DNA packed in an inverse-spool geometry imprints a highly inhomogeneous potential distribution on the outer capsid surface, whose angular structure is a direct result of the DNA-free axial void. At high salinity, the multipole spectrum of this distribution persists at large distances, whereas at low salt concentration, higher-order multipoles decay more rapidly away from the surface. The surviving quadrupole renders virus--wall and virus--virus interactions orientation dependent at the kBT level, with a preferred orientation controlled by the sign of the external charge and the pH. Using phage λ as a model system and checking robustness of our results on two other phages, we find the same behavior across a range of pH and ionic strengths. This identifies the packaged genome, rather than the symmetry of the capsid, as the origin of the long-range electrostatic anisotropy of a filled virus.
Related
- Efficient kinetic Monte Carlo simulations with long-range electrostatic interactions
- Machine-Learned Short-Range Repulsive Hamiltonians for Electrostatic QM/MM Embedding
- Design and fabrication of a silicon nitride double-ring Vernier filter for narrow-linewidth external-cavity laser in co-packaged optics
- From Microresonator to Packaged Microcomb System: Fiber-Coupled Module and System Integration
- On the description of chemical bonding using the electrostatic potential. I. Theoretical introduction and covalent interactions
BibTeX
@misc{everts2026packaged,
title = {{Packaged DNA genome sets the long-range electrostatic anisotropy of a virus}},
author = {Jeffrey C. Everts and Anže Božič and Rudolf Podgornik},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.38429},
eprint = {2609.38429},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.38429},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Packaged DNA genome sets the long-range electrostatic anisotropy of a virus
AU - Jeffrey C. Everts
AU - Anže Božič
AU - Rudolf Podgornik
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.38429
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.38429
AB - Viruses are among the most highly charged objects in biology, and electrostatic interactions permeate nearly every stage of their life cycle. At the same time, an empty icosahedral capsid is almost isotropic as far as the surrounding electrolyte is concerned---its charge distribution is anisotropic only at high multipole order, and electrostatic screening removes such anisotropy long before it can be probed at a distance. Here, we show that the packaged genome of a filled virus imparts a long-range electrostatic anisotropy that extends throughout the surrounding medium, which is not present for empty capsids. We support these findings with a novel Poisson--Boltzmann continuum theory where the orientational order of dsDNA enters through an anisotropic dielectric tensor and an inhomogeneous volume-charge distribution, which is coupled to a charge-regulating shell containing ionizable amino acid residues of the capsid proteins. The resulting electrostatic potential profiles show that DNA packed in an inverse-spool geometry imprints a highly inhomogeneous potential distribution on the outer capsid surface, whose angular structure is a direct result of the DNA-free axial void. At high salinity, the multipole spectrum of this distribution persists at large distances, whereas at low salt concentration, higher-order multipoles decay more rapidly away from the surface. The surviving quadrupole renders virus--wall and virus--virus interactions orientation dependent at the k_BT level, with a preferred orientation controlled by the sign of the external charge and the pH. Using phage λ as a model system and checking robustness of our results on two other phages, we find the same behavior across a range of pH and ionic strengths. This identifies the packaged genome, rather than the symmetry of the capsid, as the origin of the long-range electrostatic anisotropy of a filled virus.
ER -