LAUSR

Influenza Influenza A virus (IAV) causes human epidemics annually and poses an ongoing threat for pandemics. The IAV genome is packaged in the viral capsid and, for successful infection, must be released into the cytosol and then imported into the nucleus for replication. Miyake et al. studied the process by which incoming viral ribonucleoproteins (vRNPs) that carry the viral genome are unpackaged during cell infection and find their way to the nucleus. They found that transportin 1 (TNPO1) associates with incoming capsids by binding to a TNPO1-specific nuclear localization signal in the influenza matrix protein (M1). TNPO1 promotes the removal of M1 from the surface of bundled vRNPs, which leads to bundle disassembly. The dissociated vRNPs then interact with the nuclear import machinery, which delivers them via the nuclear pore complex into the nucleus. Nat. Microbiol. 10.1038/s41564-018-0332-2 (2019)