Analysis of the three-dimensional structure of the African horse sickness virus VP7 trimer by homology modelling

•VP7 crystalline particle formation likely conserved across all nine AHSV serotypes.•Model of AHSV VP7 trimer useful for design of mutagenesis studies and epitopes.•Residues grouped together on trimer surface to drive trimer-trimer interactions.•Identified useful strategy for the potential abolishment of protein self-assembly.

VP7 is the major core protein of orbiviruses and is essential for virion assembly. African horse sickness virus (AHSV) VP7 self-assembles into highly insoluble crystalline particles - an attribute that may be related to the role of AHSV VP7 in virus assembly but also prevents crystallization. Given that this inherent insolubility is unique to AHSV VP7, we use amino acid sequence conservation analysis between AHSV VP7 and other orbiviruses to identify putative key residues that drive AHSV VP7 self-assembly. A homology model of the AHSV VP7 trimer was generated to analyze surface properties of the trimer and to identify surface residues as candidates for the AHSV VP7 trimer-trimer interactions that drive AHSV VP7 self-assembly. Nine regions were identified as candidate residues for future site-directed mutagenesis experiments that will likely result in a soluble AHSV VP7 protein. Additionally, we identified putative residues that function in the intermolecular interactions within the AHSV VP7 trimer as well as several epitopes. Given the many previous efforts of solubilizing AHSV VP7, we propose a useful strategy that will yield a soluble AHSV VP7 that can be used to study AHSV assembly and increase yield of recombinant vaccine preparations.