Description
The replication of many detrimental RNA viruses, including SARS-COV-1 and -2, DENV, and HCV, are found to take place in nanoscale curved membrane compartments in host cells. This process is controlled by a few non-structural viral proteins (nsPs). However, the molecular mechanism of how nsPs assemble around the curved membrane to form viral replication complexes is largely unclear. It is mainly due to the technical challenges to probe the interaction between nsPs and the curved membrane which is often below the diffraction limit of light. In this study, we designed and fabricated a series of nanostructure arrays to generate pre-defined membrane curvatures both on the plasma membrane of live cells and on supported lipid bilayer in vitro and investigate the impact of viral nsPs curvature sensitivity on the assembly of the Chikungunya Virus (CHIKV) replication complex. Our results demonstrate that nsP1 is preferential accumulate and stabilize around nanoscale saddle curved sites. The cell membrane can facilitate the local enrichment of nsPs in a curvature-dependent way, which contributes to CHIKV replication.
