[Assembly, budding and maturation of HIV1]

The late phase of HIV-1 life cycle is one of the key steps in the replication process, the one which leads to the release of new infectious particules. This required three major steps : assembly, budding and maturation. Unfortunately, very little is known about cellular mechanisms involved in these steps. It will be particularly interesting to learn about molecular structures of the viral components within the particle and to have detailed understanding of these steps. All these data may potentially lead to the discovery of new anti-viral drugs that will inhibit Gag transport, Gag multimerization, the assembly and the budding of the HIV-1 particle. In this article, we will summarize some of the advances in this area.