title: Generating enveloped virus-like particles with in vitro assembled cores.
abstract: Alphaviruses are comprised of a nucleocapsid core surrounded by a lipid membrane containing glycoprotein spikes. Previous work demonstrated that in vitro assembled core-like particles are similar in structure to the nucleocapsid core in the native virus. Here we demonstrate that in vitro assembled core-like particles can be inserted into viral glycoprotein-expressing cells to generate enveloped virus-like particles. These virus-like particles bud from cells like native virus, are similar in size to the native virus, and can enter cells to release the contents of the core-like particle into the cytoplasm of the cell. Virus-like particles can be used to infect cells with biological and non-biological cargoes. The generation of enveloped virus-like particles containing an in vitro core and in vivo synthesized glycoproteins has applications for gene and drug delivery, medical imaging, and also basic mechanistic studies of virus assembly.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Indiana University, 212 S. Hawthorne Drive, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. fancheng@umail.iu.edu
authors.forename: Fan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Suchetana
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mukhopadhyay
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D036022:Capsid Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D002460:Cell Line; D006224:Cricetinae; D016503:Drug Delivery Systems; D015967:Gene Expression Regulation, Viral; D005822:Genetic Vectors; D012398:Ross River virus / Q000502:physiology*; D014758:Viral Core Proteins / Q000502:physiology*; D019065:Virus Assembly
chemical_list: D036022:Capsid Proteins; D014758:Viral Core Proteins