Extracellular vesicles containing virus-encoded membrane proteins are a byproduct of infection with modified vaccinia virus Ankara.

Vaccinia virus is a structurally complex virus that multiplies in the cell cytoplasm. The assembly of Vaccinia virus particles and their egress from infected cells exploit cellular pathways. Most notably, intracellular mature viral particles are enwrapped by Golgi-derived or endosomal vesicles. These enveloped particles, enriched in virus-encoded proteins, migrate to the cell surface where they are released into the extracellular space through fusion of their outer envelope with the cell membrane. We report that baby hamster kidney cells productively infected with the modified vaccinia virus Ankara strain (MVA) also release extracellular vesicles containing virus-encoded envelope proteins but devoid of any virus cargo. Such vesicles were visualized on the cell surface by electron microscopy and immunogold labelling of the B5 envelope protein. A portion of the B5 protein was found to be associated with non-viral material in high speed ultracentrifugation pellets and displayed a buoyant density characteristic of exosomes released by some cell types. An unrelated transmembrane protein (CD40 ligand) encoded by the MVA genome was also incorporated into extracellular vesicles but not into the envelopes that surround extracellular enveloped virus. High speed pellets obtained by centrifugation of culture medium from cells infected with MVA encoding CD40 ligand displayed the ability to induce dendritic cell maturation suggesting that the ligand is on the outer surface of the extracellular vesicles. We propose that the formation of extracellular vesicles after vaccinia virus infection is a byproduct of the pathway leading to the formation of extracellular enveloped virus.