Two distinct mechanisms regulate recruitment of murine leukemia virus envelope protein to retroviral assembly sites

The cytoplasmic tail domain (CTD) of retroviral envelope (Env) proteins has been implicated in modulating Env incorporation into viral particles. We generated a panel of murine leukemia virus (MLV) Env mutants and analyzed their ability to be recruited to human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) assembly sites. Surprisingly, the entire CTD was dispensable for recruitment to assembly sites, but a mutation that disrupted the furin cleavage site in Env abolished recruitment. To determine if MLV Env can show selectivity for homologous assembly sites, cells were co-transfected with both HIV-1 and MLV assembly components along with each MLV Env construct and assayed for infectious particle production. MLV Env selectively formed infectious particles with the MLV components at the expense of infectious HIV-1 infectious particle production, but truncation of the CTD progressively reduced this selectivity. Collectively these data suggest that there are two separable mechanisms that govern MLV Env recruitment to viral assembly sites.