Arenavirus Stable Signal Peptide Is the Keystone Subunit for Glycoprotein Complex Organization

Bederka, Lydia H.; Bonhomme, Cyrille J.; Ling, Emily L.; Buchmeier, Michael J.

The SSP and the GP2 cytoplasmic domains have been shown to play critical roles in maturation. Recent studies using reverse genetics permitted infectious, chimeric Lassa/Junín-Candid1 virus production when the glycoprotein SSP and GP2 cytoplasmic domains were homologous and not of mismatched viral origin (45) . This observation, together with our immunoprecipitation experiments, highlights the critical interactions between the SSP and GP2 subunits. Further, our confocal microscopy and flow cytometry analyses did not result in GP1/2 localization at the plasma membrane. Since we used only LCMV glycoprotein constructs for our experiments, it is possible the differing results we observed are due to slight differences between different arenavirus protein expression mechanisms.