Abstract
Publisher Summary This chapter treats recent findings concerning the biosynthetic machinery in mosquito and vertebrate cells infected with alphatogaviruses and attempts to integrate fusion phenomena into the overall picture. Alphaviruses are fusogenic at a mildly acidic pH. The infectious chain in nature is a kind of merry-go-round involving mosquito and vertebrate cells. However, the outcome of the infection is not the same in these cell types, being far apart from one another in evolution. Therefore, the chapter compares the intracellular events finally leading to cytopathic effects (CPEs) and fusion from within (FFWI) and show that FFWI is not a phenomenon which can be considered a natural CPE. It also examines how it is related to endosomal fusion (EF). As there is evidence that proton channels are opened in several virus families if fusogenic conformational changes take place at the plasma membrane (PM), the chapter discusses which reactions of the biochemical fusion cascade need energy.
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