The Infectious Bronchitis Virus Coronavirus Envelope Protein Alters Golgi pH to Protect Spike Protein and Promote Release of Infectious Virus

Jason W. Westerbeck; Carolyn E. Machamer

. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It . https://doi.org/10.1101/440628 doi: bioRxiv preprint 6 Herein, we provide evidence for the neutralization of the Golgi during IBV infection and we demonstrate that transient over-expression of the IBV E protein, but not HD mutants deficient in the LMW pool of IBV E, is sufficient to cause a significant increase in the pH of the Golgi lumen. We suggest that increased trafficking and aberrant cleavage of the IBV S protein observed during IBV EG3 infection may reflect the detrimental effect of normal pH on IBV S processing. We demonstrate that IBV S processing and trafficking is similarly aberrant when coexpressed with EG3 but not WT E, and that IAV M2 can substitute for WT E to protect S from premature cleavage.