The lipidomes of vesicular stomatitis virus, semliki forest virus, and the host plasma membrane analyzed by quantitative shotgun mass spectrometry.

Although enveloped virus assembly in the host cell is a crucial step in the virus life cycle, it remains poorly understood. One issue is how viruses include lipids in their membranes during budding from infected host cells. To analyze this issue, we took advantage of the fact that baby hamster kidney cells can be infected by two different viruses, namely, vesicular stomatitis virus and Semliki Forest virus, from the Rhabdoviridae and Togaviridae families, respectively. We purified the host plasma membrane and the two different viruses after exit from the host cells and analyzed the lipid compositions of the membranes by quantitative shotgun mass spectrometry. We observed that the lipid compositions of these otherwise structurally different viruses are virtually indistinguishable, and only slight differences were detected between the viral lipid composition and that of the plasma membrane. Taken together, the facts that the lipid compositions of the two viruses are so similar and that they strongly resemble the composition of the plasma membrane suggest that these viruses exert little selection in including lipids in their envelopes.