Fig. 2
From: Towards improvements in foot-and-mouth disease vaccine performance
The assembly of FMDV particles. The myristoylated capsid precursor protein (P1-2A) is cleaved by the 3C protease to form protomers (5S) consisting of VP0, VP3 and VP1. Five of these protomers assemble into pentamers (12S) and 12 of these combine to form the near spherical capsid particles containing 60 copies of each of the viral capsid proteins. When RNA is packaged, then infectious particles are formed (146S) but non-infectious empty capsid particles (70S), without any viral RNA, can also be made (not shown). The cleavage of VP0 to VP4 and VP2 (see Fig. 1) accompanies the process of particle assembly and, at least for FMDV, does not require the presence of viral RNA