Plunder and Stowaways: Incorporation of Cellular Proteins by Enveloped Viruses

To be successful and have the opportunity to replicate properly, a virus has to thwart or, just the reverse, boost many systems of the host cell. Given that host cells have evolved to eliminate these hostile parasites, a fierce battle ensues. There is now compelling evidence that enveloped virions released from infected cells will carry the vestiges of this battle both internally and externally. The focus of the present minireview will be the incorporation of the host cellular proteins into or onto the newly formed viruses. The roles of a few of these host cellular proteins have been studied, albeit very recently, because of their implication in the biology of some viruses. But for the vast majority, only the observation of their incorporation has been reported in the scientific literature. The various studies in this research area have been conducted with eukaryotic cells infected primarily with RNA enveloped viruses. Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) has been the most extensively studied in this respect, but other viruses have also contributed to a better understanding of this intriguing phenomenon. A list of the molecules that have been reported to be embedded in some enveloped viruses is shown in Table ​Table1.1. The processes through which cellular proteins are acquired by viruses are still ill defined. Here we will describe and discuss the roles, or potential roles, that the major cellular proteins found associated with enveloped viruses may play in their life cycles. First, the internally associated host cell molecules will be described, and in a second section, the cell surface constituents found included within the envelopes of different viruses will be introduced. TABLE 1. Host cellular molecules acquired by some enveloped viruses