Do enveloped viruses contain MHC molecules?
From what I can find (and remember), there do not appear to be many or any MHC molecules in HSV envelopes. There was a paper that came out this September that examined virion protein content by mass-spectrometry. This list could be incomplete due to a cell type dependency on what gets incorporated (in the paper, they purified virions from HeLa cells, which might differ from virus purified from another cell line that isn’t totally screwed up like HeLas are) or limitations in the method used. A quick look on Pubmed and through Fields Virology, however, doesn’t really turn up any other info on this. The lack of MHC in an HSV envelope would make sense, though, because the HSV protein, ICP47, actively prevents TAP1/2 from loading antigen onto MHC I and, if I remember right, antigen loading is necessary for MHC I to migrate to the plasma membrane.
Okay, so there is something else on Pubmed about this: HSV interferes with the expression of MHC II cofactors and prevents cell surface expression of MHC II.
