Fig. 18.

The capsid model from Ref.[76]. (A) The model subunit, as viewed from inside the capsid. The gray overlapping spheres interact via repulsive potentials [266], complementary capsomer-capsomer attractors (green spheres at the subunit edges) experience attractive interactions and the capsomer-polymer attractors (blue spheres on the subunit inner surface) experience short-range attractions to polymer segments. Sphere sizes indicate the interaction length scale. (B) Image of a well-formed capsid assembled around a polymer (shown in red). (C) Visualization of the polymer density inside the capsid. The polymer density is averaged over a large number of successful assembly trajectories after completion, for a polymer with length N_p = 150 segments. Densities are averaged over the threefold symmetry of the capsomer, but not over the 20-fold symmetry group of the completed capsid. Images reprinted with permission from Phys. Biol., 7, 045003 (2010), Elrad and Hagan, Encapsulation of a polymer by an icosahedral virus, Copyright (2010) IOP Publishing.