ИСТИНА

Enveloped viruses presents a large family of pathogens including such dangerous ones like HIV, Ebola, Zika, etc. These viruses have their genome wrapped in a protein scaffold, which, in turn, is surrounded by the bilayer lipid membrane. Viral membrane is formed by lipid molecules captured by the virus during its budding from the plasma membrane of the infected cell. It is of great interest to investigate, which of the viral proteins is responsible for the formation of the curvature required for bud initiation and whether viral proteins have sensitivity to membrane curvature. Using a system of lipid nanotubes, which allows the creation of highly curved lipid surfaces, we investigated the self-organization of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) polyprotein Gag and showed that this protein tends to self-organize in curved sections of the membrane.