On 28th November OxTalks will move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events' (full details are available on the Staff Gateway).
There will be an OxTalks freeze beginning on Friday 14th November. This means you will need to publish any of your known events to OxTalks by then as there will be no facility to publish or edit events in that fortnight. During the freeze, all events will be migrated to the new Oxford Events site. It will still be possible to view events on OxTalks during this time.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Genome encapsidation is an essential step in the life-cycle of viruses. In the case of single-stranded (ss)RNA viruses, this step occurs in parallel with genome packaging in a co-assembly process. Long ssRNAs exist as multiple conformers in equilibrium, while only one of these conformers includes a compacted state allowing the RNA to be confined within the virion. We have used fluorescence correlation spectroscopy to monitor the conformations of viral genomes in the absence and presence of viral coat proteins and demonstrate that efficient selection of cognate viral ssRNA destined for genome packaging is controlled by multiple RNA-protein contacts formed during encapsidation. I will then cover mechanisms of genome encapsidation in viruses with dsRNA genomes, discussing the roles of multiple protein-RNA and RNA-RNA interactions in the assortment and packaging of segmented RNA genomes in these viruses.
