Quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring and total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy have been used to investigate binding of norovirus-like particles (noroVLPs) to a supported (phospho)lipid bilayer (SLB) containing a few percent of H or B type 1 glycosphingolipid (GSL) receptors. Although neither of these GSLs spontaneously form domains, noroVLPs were observed to form micron-sized clusters containing typically up to about 30 VLP copies, especially for B type 1, which is a higher-affinity receptor. This novel finding is explained by proposing a model implying that VLP-induced membrane deformation promotes VLP clustering, a hypothesis that was further supported by observing that functionalized gold nanoparticles were able to locally induce SLB deformation. Because similar effects are likely possible also at cellular membranes, our findings are interesting beyond a pure biophysicochemical perspective as they shed new light on what may happen during receptor-mediated uptake of viruses as well as nanocarriers in drug delivery.

中文翻译：

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膜变形诱导诺如病毒的群集绑定到支持的细胞膜模拟糖鞘脂。

具有耗散监测和全内反射荧光显微镜的石英晶体微量天平已用于研究诺如病毒样颗粒（noroVLP）与含有少量H或B型1型鞘糖脂（GSL）的支持的（磷脂）脂质双层（SLB）的结合）受体。尽管这些GSL都不是自发形成域，但观察到noroVLP形成了微米级簇，通常包含多达约30个VLP拷贝，尤其是对于B型1（亲和力更高的受体）。通过提出一个模型来解释这一新发现，该模型暗示了VLP诱导的膜变形会促进VLP聚集，这一假说通过观察功能化的金纳米粒子能够局部诱导SLB变形而得到进一步支持。