Fig. 3: Roles of PSs in regulation of in vitro assembly of HBV NCPs.

a Cp dimer was titrated at 10 min intervals (left) into heat-annealed (‘Methods’) HBV gRNA transcript in a 96-well plate. Reactions were then pooled (grey) and split into 2 (red/blue), one of which was treated with RNase (blue). Aliquots of each were visualised by nsEM and the remaining sample analysed by SEC-MALLS chromatography, recording the elution volumes (graph, right) and hydrodynamic radii (R_h, bar above peak) of particulate reassembly products from their light-scattering (‘Methods’). b Left: LS traces of the reassembly products with PS variants of 1 nM HBV gRNA and HBV Cp dimer: red and blue traces are pre- and post-RNase treatment, respectively. Middle/Right: nsEMs of the assembly products shown (left). Scale bars = 50 nm. c Left: LS traces, as in (b), with 1 nM ΔPS (top) and ΔPS1 (bottom), and Middle/Right: nsEMs of the assembly products shown. Data found in Supplementary Data 1.