Fig. 1.
Adenovirus vectors used in this study. Panel A: wildtype Ad5 has a fibre length of ~37 nm which, together with the main virion size of 95 nm, provide an overall virion diameter of 169 nm. Substitution of the Ad5 shaft region for that of Ad9 reduces the length of fibre to ~12 nm, and reduces the overall virion diameter to 119 nm, or 30% smaller than Ad5. Viruses are drawn to approximate scale. Panel B: all viruses are deleted of the Ad early region 1 (E1) and E3, and encode the E. coli lacZ gene under the regulation of the human cytomegalovirus (CMV) immediate early enhancer/promoter and bovine growth hormone polyadenylation sequence (pA). Ad5SpKlacZ also contains a polylysine motif within the HI loop of the knob domain of fibre. Panels C and D: virus particles (109) were lysed in SDS–protein loading buffer, separated by SDS–PAGE, and the amount of hexon (Panel C) and fibre (Panel D) was determined by immunoblot.