In macrophages, HIV-1 has been shown to bud into intracellular structures that contain the late endosome marker CD63. We show that these organelles are not endosomes, but an internally sequestered plasma membrane domain. Using immunofluorescence microscopy and immunoelectron microscopy, we find that HIV-1 buds into a compartment that contains the tetraspanins CD81, CD9, and CD53. On uninfected macrophages, these proteins are seen at the cell surface and in intracellular vacuole-like structures with a complex content of vesicles and interconnected membranes that lack endosome markers, including CD63. Significantly, these structures are accessible to small tracers (horseradish peroxidase or ruthenium red) applied to cells at 4°C, indicating that they are connected to the cell surface. HIV assembles on, and accumulates within, these intracellular compartments. Furthermore, CD63 is recruited to the virus-containing structures and incorporated into virions. These results indicate that, in macrophages, HIV-1 exploits a previously undescribed intracellular plasma membrane domain to assemble infectious particles.

During the assembly of enveloped viruses viral and cellular components essential for infectious particles must colocalize at specific membrane locations. For the human and simian immunodeficiency viruses (HIV and SIV), sorting of the viral envelope proteins (Env) to assembly sites is directed by trafficking signals located in the cytoplasmic domain of the transmembrane protein gp41 (TM). A membrane proximal conserved GYxxØ motif mediates endocytosis through interaction with the clathrin adaptor AP-2. However, experiments with SIV mac239 Env indicate the presence of additional signals. Here we show that a conserved C-terminal dileucine in HIV HxB2 also mediates endocytosis. Biochemical and morphological assays demonstrate that the C-terminal dileucine motif mediates internalization as efficiently as the GYxxØ motif and that both must be removed to prevent Env internalization. RNAi experiments show that depletion of the clathrin adaptor AP-2 leads to increased plasma membrane expression of HIV Env and that this adaptor is required for efficient internalization mediated by both signals. The redundancy of conserved endocytosis signals and the role of the SIV mac239 Env GYxxØ motif in SIV pathogenesis, suggest that these motifs have functions in addition to endocytosis, possibly related to Env delivery to the site of viral assembly and/or incorporation into budding virions. INTRODUCTIONThe assembly of enveloped animal viruses requires that the viral and cellular components needed to make infectious particles are brought to the same site within the infected cell at the same time. For the primate lentiviruses (the human immunodeficiency viruses types 1 and 2 [HIV-1 and -2] and the simian immunodeficiency viruses [SIV]) the key viral structural proteins required to generate infectious particles are Gag, Gag-Pol, and Env. Although Gag alone can promote the formation of virus-like particles, Env and Gag-Pol are both essential for the formation of infectious virions. Although a considerable amount is known about these proteins, little is understood of the mechanisms through which they are targeted to the sites of assembly in infected cells.In many cell types, HIV assembles at the plasma membrane and, in the course of Gag assembly, the particles derive their membrane from the plasma membrane. For these particles to be infectious, Env must be transported to the cell surface, but the level to which it is incorporated into budding virions is unclear. Recent data have suggested that fewer than 10 Env protein complexes (trimers) are incorporated per virion (Chertova et al., 2002;Zhu et al., 2003), and early studies of HIV infected T-cells showed that much of the newly synthesized Env is transported to lysosomes and degraded (Willey et al., 1988). However, it has recently become evident that in macrophages the assembly of Envcontaining infectious HIV occurs on intracellular membranes, that have some characteristics in common with late endosomes (Raposo et al., 2002;Pelchen-Matthews et al., 2003). The assembly of virus in distinct...