To complete its assembly and budding efficiently, virus proteins are designed to accumulate at the assembly site after synthesis. However, as this process requires huge energy to change the shape of cellular membrane, many viruses have evolved to utilize cellular sorting mechanism, such as ESCRT machinery.
Although ESCRT is recognized as a representative pathway to support envelope virus assembly and budding, it was shown that influenza virus assembly is independent of ESCRT (Watanabe and Lamb, 2010). I am trying to understand this ESCRT-independent assembly mechanism by analyzing the oligomerization process for influenza virus matrix protein.