contacts, we obtained results comparable to those
found in previous literature. Furthermore, the usage
of a 60-subunit model allows the study of cases such
as those of Human Adenoviruses, which do not lose
triangular faces of the Icosahedron, but a pentagon
of faces of the Deltoidal Hexecontahedron. Nonethe-
less, an increase of the sample size is an important
follow-up step, since it would give a better insight into
the trends observed for the different viruses studies.
Moreover, the number of subunits removed from the
capsid structures should be above 5 to offer a perspec-
tive of what would be the next steps on the disassem-
bly pathway. Improvement of the algorithms as well
as the processing power could provide more informa-
tive results beyond 5. Understanding the way viruses’
capsids disassemble can be used to interfere with the
inter-subunit interactions, specially those who hold
the triangular trimer in the complete capsid. Antiviral
drugs can thus be design to disrupt these interactions.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Work supported by project RECI/BBB-
BEP/0104/2012 from Fundac¸
˜
ao para a Ci
ˆ
encia
e Tecnologia, Portugal. The funders had no role in
study design, data collection and analysis, decision to
publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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