Figure 2.

(A) Force actings on tip-sphere as a function of time (blue) and distance (red) during typical force-probe simulation in which tip-sphere was pushed against protein A of SU 12 at a probe-velocity of 0.01 nm/ps. Three regimes can be distinguished: 1), a prelinear regime; 2), a linear regime; and 3), a rearrangement regime. Black line depicts slope in the force-distance plot from which the elastic constant (in N/m) is determined. (B) Sketch of SU 12 (yellow) and adjacent subunits (white). Black dots mark grid points at which elastic properties were determined by force-probe simulations in which the tip-sphere was pushed at a probe velocity of 0.01 nm/ps against the capsid. The obtained elastic constants are shown in red, green, and blue; different colors of numbers denote different push-vector directions perpendicular to the viral surface. (C) Color-coded distribution of elastic constants on the viral shell, obtained from values in B (soft, blue; stiff, red). (D) Zoom to subunit 12, with color-coding as described in C. (E) Histogram of elastic constants obtained from 38 FP simulations toward 19 grid points shown in B, at probe-velocity of 0.01 nm/ps.