The Great (Nuclear) Escape: New Insights into the Role of the Nuclear Egress Complex of Herpesviruses

Abstract

Herpesviruses are unusual among enveloped viruses because they bud twice yet acquire a single envelope. They are also the only known viruses that bud into the nuclear envelope. We discovered that the herpesvirus nuclear egress complex could bud membranes without the help of other proteins by forming a coat-like hexagonal scaffold inside the budding membrane. This finding raises the possibility that a phenotypically similar nuclear export of large RNAs is cargo driven.