RNA structure interactions and ribonucleoprotein processes of the influenza A virus

Dawson, Wayne K; Lazniewski, Michal; Plewczynski, Dariusz

At the end of the cycle, the vRNP cluster with M1 sets into the budding site, the HA-trimers and NA-tetramers position themselves at the apical positions. Evenly distributed on the surface of the budding virion, M1 and M2 also become positioned. Based on the structure in [4, 53] , the NA-tetramer appears on only one side, perhaps, to help cleave the budding virion. How this assembly mechanism might lead to organization of HA and NA into complete, budding virions and how it leads to the selective incorporation of viral genome segments will require further investigation [82] . Other proteins such as NEP and NS1 would be buried within the nucleocapsid. The envelop layer encloses the viral material enabling the virion to leave the infected cell [28, 52, 54, 71] .