This book will contain a series of solicited chapters that concern with the molecular machines required by viruses to perform various essential functions of virus life cycle. The first three chapters (Introduction, Molecular Machines and Virus Architecture) introduce the reader to the best known molecular machines and to the structure of viruses. The remainder of the book will examine in detail various stages of the viral life cycle. Beginning with the viral entry into a host cell, the book takes the reader through replication of the genome, synthesis and assembly of viral structural components, genome packaging and maturation into an infectious virion. Each chapter will describe the components of the respective machine in molecular or atomic detail, genetic and biochemical analyses, and mechanism. Topics are carefully selected so that the reader is exposed to systems where there is a substantial infusion of new knowledge in recent years, which greatly elevated the fundamental mechanistic understanding of the respective molecular machine. The authors will be encouraged to simplify the detailed knowledge to basic concepts, include provocative new ideas, as well as design colorful graphics, thus making the cutting-edge information accessible to broad audience.

This book will contain a series of solicited chapters that concern with the molecular machines required by viruses to perform various essential functions of virus life cycle. The first three chapters (Introduction, Molecular Machines and Virus Architecture) introduce the reader to the best known molecular machines and to the structure of viruses. The remainder of the book will examine in detail various stages of the viral life cycle. Beginning with the viral entry into a host cell, the book takes the reader through replication of the genome, synthesis and assembly of viral structural components, genome packaging and maturation into an infectious virion. Each chapter will describe the components of the respective machine in molecular or atomic detail, genetic and biochemical analyses, and mechanism. Topics are carefully selected so that the reader is exposed to systems where there is a substantial infusion of new knowledge in recent years, which greatly elevated the fundamental mechanistic understanding of the respective molecular machine. The authors will be encouraged to simplify the detailed knowledge to basic concepts, include provocative new ideas, as well as design colorful graphics, thus making the cutting-edge information accessible to broad audience.

About 50 publications out of more than 500 have been selected from the work of Michael Rossmann covering the years from 1958 to 2012. These include his early work with Max Perutz on hemoglobin and the first protein structures to his current work on the structures of small icosahedral and large polymorphic viruses. These papers describe not only some of the first protein and virus structures, but also the crystallographic and electron microscopic technologies. Furthermore, the author's interests include evolution and protein folding.The selected papers are a personal history of structural biology and especially of structural virology. The papers describe many of the basic techniques of structural biology such as isomorphous replacement, anomalous dispersion of X-rays, the molecular replacement method, X-ray diffraction data processing and combining crystallographic data with electron microscopic images.The book covers much of the historical development of the modern flourishing field of structural biology in terms of the authors' own contributions.