While the cell imposes multiple barriers to virus entry, enveloped viruses are remarkably still able to gain entry to their cellular hosts by hitchhiking and remodeling the endomembrane system to traffic within, and eventually escape from, endosomal organelles for their genome release. Elucidating viral entry mechanisms and their interaction with the host trafficking network is necessary for antiviral therapy. Here, we focus on the use of host autophagy molecular factors during the entry of prototypic negative-stranded RNA viruses, and highlight recent progress in our understanding of the role of one such factor, UVRAG, in both viral and cellular endocytic membrane trafficking and fusion events.
Keywords: SNAREs; UVRAG; autophagy; class C Vps complex; virus entry.