Alix serves as an adaptor that allows human parainfluenza virus type 1 to interact with the host cell ESCRT system.

The cellular ESCRT (endosomal sorting complex required for transport) system functions in cargo-sorting, in the formation of intraluminal vesicles that comprise multivesicular bodies (MVB), and in cytokinesis, and this system can be hijacked by a number of enveloped viruses to promote budding. The respiratory pathogen human parainfluenza virus type I (HPIV1) encodes a nested set of accessory C proteins that play important roles in down-regulating viral transcription and replication, in suppressing the type I interferon (IFN) response, and in suppressing apoptosis. Deletion or mutation of the C proteins attenuates HPIV1 in vivo, and such mutants are being evaluated preclinically and clinically as vaccines. We show here that the C proteins interact and co-localize with the cellular protein Alix, which is a member of the class E vacuolar protein sorting (Vps) proteins that assemble at endosomal membranes into ESCRT complexes. The HPIV1 C proteins interact with the Bro1 domain of Alix at a site that is also required for the interaction between Alix and Chmp4b, a subunit of ESCRT-III. The C proteins are ubiquitinated and subjected to proteasome-mediated degradation, but the interaction with AlixBro1 protects the C proteins from degradation. Neither over-expression nor knock-down of Alix expression had an effect on HPIV1 replication, although this might be due to the large redundancy of Alix-like proteins. In contrast, knocking down the expression of Chmp4 led to an approximately 100-fold reduction in viral titer during infection with wild-type (WT) HPIV1. This level of reduction was similar to that observed for the viral mutant, P(C-) HPIV1, in which expression of the C proteins were knocked out. Chmp4 is capable of out-competing the HPIV1 C proteins for binding Alix. Together, this suggests a possible model in which Chmp4, through Alix, recruits the C proteins to a common site on intracellular membranes and facilitates budding.

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