Efficient Budding of the Tacaribe Virus Matrix Protein Z Requires the Nucleoprotein
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Z protein has been shown for several arenaviruses to serve as the viral matrix protein. As such, Z provides the principal force for the budding of virus particles and is capable of forming virus-like particles (VLPs) when expressed alone. For most arenaviruses, this activity has been shown to be linked to the presence of proline-rich late-domain motifs in the C terminus; however, for the New World arenavirus Tacaribe virus (TCRV), no such motif exists within Z. It was recently demonstrated that while TCRV Z is still capable of functioning as a matrix protein to induce the formation of VLPs, neither its ASAP motif, which replaces a canonical PT/SAP motif in related viruses, nor its YxxL motif is involved in budding, leading to the suggestion that TCRV uses a novel budding mechanism. Here we show that in comparison to its closest relative, Junin virus (JUNV), TCRV Z buds only weakly when expressed in isolation. While this budding activity is independent of the ASAP or YxxL motif, it is significantly enhanced by coexpression with the nucleoprotein (NP), an effect not seen with JUNV Z. Interestingly, both the ASAP and YxxL motifs of Z appear to be critical for the recruitment of NP into VLPs, as well as for the enhancement of TCRV Z-mediated budding. While it is known that TCRV budding remains dependent on the endosomal sorting complex required for transport, our findings provide further evidence that TCRV uses a budding mechanism distinct from that of other known arenaviruses and suggest an essential role for NP in this process.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".