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CELL POLARITY

Viruses show the way

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology volume 23, page 698 (2022)Cite this article

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Compartmentalization of the epithelial plasma membrane involves an apical (exposed to the lumen) and a basolateral (exposed to the extracellular matrix (ECM) and adjoining cells) domain, the identities of which are maintained by stereotypical organellar positioning and regulated intracellular trafficking of proteins and lipids. Since the 1970s, we have become aware of the capital importance of epithelial cell polarity for the functioning of organs, invasion by pathogens and development of cancer. However, the field seemed to lack a reliable system to study cell polarity. This rapidly changed owing to the pioneering work by Enrique Rodriguez-Boulan and David Sabatini, who established that virus-infected epithelial cells can serve as an excellent model to study molecular mechanisms of polarity establishment (Boulan & Sabatini, 1978).

To do so, they infected epithelial cells with an array of viruses and investigated the location of the virion budding using electron microscopy. Each virus was found to have distinct routes of budding, either from the apical or the basolateral surface. This phenomenon of asymmetric budding was typical for each virus, and not dependent on the infected cell line. The authors concluded that polarity is established before budding, when viral glycoproteins accumulate in specific domains of the plasma membrane: “polarity is thus manifested before budding, in the process by which viral glycoproteins are addressed to their final destination”, which was explicitly shown in a follow-up work (Boulan & Pendergast, 1980). Such specificity of protein sorting was in accordance with the concept of signals present in proteins that allowed for their distinct targeting fates, originally hypothesized in 1971 by the pioneering work of Günter Blobel.

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References

Original article

  • Rodriguez-Boulan, E. & Sabatini, D. D. Asymmetric budding of viruses in epithelial monolayers: a model system for study of epithelial polarity. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 75, 5071–5075 (1978)

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  • Rodriguez-Boulan, E. & Pendergast, M. Polarized distribution of viral envelope proteins in the plasma membrane of infected epithelial cells. Cell 20, 45–54 (1980)

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  1. Department of Cell Biology and Infection, Pasteur Institute, Paris, France

    Chiara Zurzolo

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  1. Chiara Zurzolo
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Correspondence to Chiara Zurzolo.

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Zurzolo, C. Viruses show the way. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 23, 698 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41580-022-00525-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41580-022-00525-3

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