Tomato spotted wilt virus particle assembly and the prospects of fluorescence microscopy to study protein-protein interactions involved

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the current status of tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) particle assembly and the involvement of structural proteins in this process and compares to what is known of the animal-infecting counterparts. It also describes the recently developed fluorescence microscopy techniques that enable the analysis of in vivo protein–protein interactions and how some of these techniques have been employed, as exemplified by recently obtained results, to unravel protein-protein interactions during TSWV particle assembly. Based on the first results on in vivo protein–protein interactions between TSWV structural proteins using fluorescence resonance energy transfer microscopy, it is clear that this and newly developed fluorescence microscopy techniques may become valuable tools not only to unravel the maturation of TSWV and other bunyavirus particles, but also for virology in general to identify and characterize interactions between viral proteins and/or host factors involved in many different processes like replication, transcription, translation, and viral spread.