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Journal of Virology, November 2008, p. 10429-10435, Vol. 82, No. 21
0022-538X/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JVI.01223-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Structural Rearrangement within an Enveloped Virus upon Binding to the Host Cell{triangledown} ,{dagger}

David G. Meckes Jr. and John W. Wills*

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, Pennsylvania 17033

Received 12 June 2008/ Accepted 11 August 2008

We have made the surprising discovery that the interactions of herpes simplex virus with its initial cell attachment receptor induce a rapid and highly efficient structural change in the tegument, the region of the virion situated between the membrane and the capsid. It has been known for nearly a decade that viruses can trigger host signaling pathways when they bind to receptors on the cell surface; however, until now there has been no evidence that a signal can be sent in reverse—from the "outside in"—across a viral membrane. Evidence for this signaling event was found during studies of UL16, a tegument protein that is conserved among all the herpesviruses. Previous work has demonstrated that UL16 is bound to capsids isolated from the cytoplasm of infected cells, but this interaction is destabilized during subsequent egress steps, leading to release of the extracellular virion. Pretreatment with N-ethylmaleimide, a small, membrane-permeating compound that covalently modifies free cysteines, restabilizes the interaction, thereby permitting the capsid-UL16 complex to be isolated following disruption of virions with NP-40. In the experiments described here, we found that the natural signal for release of UL16 from capsids is sent when virions merely bind to cells at 4°C. The internal change was also observed upon binding to immobilized heparin in a manner that requires viral glycoprotein C. This represents the first example of signaling across a viral envelope following receptor binding.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, 500 University Drive, P.O. Box 850, Hershey, PA 17033. Phone: (717) 531-3528. Fax: (717) 531-6522. E-mail: jww4{at}psu.edu

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 20 August 2008.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jvi.asm.org/.

Journal of Virology, November 2008, p. 10429-10435, Vol. 82, No. 21
0022-538X/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JVI.01223-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Newcomb, W. W., Brown, J. C. (2009). Time-Dependent Transformation of the Herpesvirus Tegument. J. Virol. 83: 8082-8089 [Abstract] [Full Text]  
  • Yeh, P.-C., Meckes, D. G. Jr., Wills, J. W. (2008). Analysis of the Interaction between the UL11 and UL16 Tegument Proteins of Herpes Simplex Virus. J. Virol. 82: 10693-10700 [Abstract] [Full Text]  


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