Structure of the Chimalliviridae bacteriophage Goslar reveals host recognition and infection machinery.

Cryo-EM structures of the Escherichia coli-infecting Chimalliviridae phage Goslar reveal capsid, portal, tail, and baseplate architecture, including a Chimalliviridae-specific filament system.

• Why it matters: Chimalliviridae phages build intracellular compartments that shield genomes, but how their infection machinery and host recognition components are organized is not well defined.
• What they did: The authors used cryo-electron microscopy plus manual modeling of 25 structural proteins and AlphaFold predictions for three more, assembling a composite model of 2888 protein chains from 28 proteins. They then combined this with quantitative mass spectrometry of Goslar virions to find high-copy virion-associated proteins.
• The result: The structure and proteomics identify several high-copy virion-associated proteins likely important for injection into host cells, and a Chimalliviridae-specific filament family with carbohydrate-binding domains anchored at the baseplate.

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