Change the Channel

Blocking the budding of viruses – when they wrap themselves in the host cell membrane and move off to spread the infection – could be a good strategy to stop them in their tracks. Researchers interested in alphaviruses – a type that includes chikungunya and Sindbis viruses – examined the role of a protein called 6K in virus assembly and spreading. They found that it functions as a channel to let molecules pass through membranes, like has been seen in proteins of HIV and influenza. This ion channel activity was needed for the formation of vacuoles in the cell, which promote the transport of proteins to the cell lining where they are incorporated into new virus particles (these proteins in red spread throughout the membrane, left, compared to clumping in the absence of 6K, right). Interfering with 6K action could be a new way to treat infection, and nip budding in the bud.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Zeinab Elmasri and colleagues
• Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in PLOS Pathogens, October 2022