Biochemistry

E-mail: wes@biochem.utah.edu
Address: EEJ Rm 4100
Phone: 585-5402

Virus Budding

Together with our collaborators at the University of Utah and Myriad Genetics, we have helped define a human cellular pathway (the “ESCRT” pathway) that allows HIV to bud from cells.  The ESCRT pathway normally functions to create vesicles that bud into a late endosomal compartment called the multivesicular body and to help mediate the final stage of cytokinesis.  The HIV Gag protein usurps this pathway by binding directly to ESCRT components, and thereby redirects the cellular machinery to the plasma membrane for use in virus budding.  We have now identified ~30 ESCRT proteins that function in HIV budding, MVB biogenesis, and cytokinesis, and we are investigating how these proteins recognize one another and function in the membrane remodeling events that accompany virus budding, MVB vesicle formation, and cytokinesis.

1/2008