Two domains of the Borna disease virus p40 protein are required for interaction with the p23 protein

Borna disease virus (BDV) has five major open reading frames, which encode the proteins p40, p23, gp18, p57 and p190, By analogy with other negative-s trand RNA viruses, p40 is a putative nucleoprotein and p23 is a putative ph osphoprotein. These proteins are known to form complexes with each other an d with the polymerase protein in other viruses. In this paper, it is shown that BDV p40 and p23 can form complexes with each other in infected cells. Furthermore, the amino acids of p40 that are necessary for formation of thi s complex have been mapped.