Viruses 2014, 6, 3837-3854; doi:10.3390/v6103837 OPEN ACCESS viruses ISSN 1999-4915 www.mdpi.com/journal/viruses Article A Loop Region in the N-Terminal Domain of Ebola Virus VP40 Is Important in Viral Assembly, Budding, and Egress Emmanuel Adu-Gyamfi 1,†,‡, Smita P. Soni 2,‡, Clara S. Jee 1, Michelle A. Digman 3,4, Enrico Gratton 3 and Robert V. Stahelin 1,2,* 1 Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the Eck Institute for Global Health, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA; E-Mails:
[email protected] (E.A.-G.);
[email protected] (C.S.J.) 2 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend, South Bend, IN 46617, USA; E-Mail:
[email protected] 3 Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA; E-Mails:
[email protected] (M.A.D.);
[email protected] (E.G.) 4 Centre for Bioactive Discovery in Health and Ageing, School of Science and Technology, University of New England, Armidale NSW 2351, Australia † Current address: Department of Molecular Biosciences/HHMI, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. ‡ These authors contributed equally to this work. * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail:
[email protected]; Tel.: +1-574-631-5054; Fax: +1-574-631-7821. External Editor: Jens H. Kuhn Received: 1 July 2014; in revised form: 9 October 2014 / Accepted: 11 October 2014 / Published: 17 October 2014 Abstract: Ebola virus (EBOV) causes viral hemorrhagic fever in humans and can have clinical fatality rates of ~60%. The EBOV genome consists of negative sense RNA that encodes seven proteins including viral protein 40 (VP40).