The Small-Membrane Protein

Abstract

Recently, it has become evident that, in addition to the S, M, and N proteins, the Coronavirus genome encodes a further structural protein, the small-membrane or sM protein (Liu and Inglis, 1991; Godet et al., 1992; Yu et al., 1994). In this chapter, I shall describe the structure and expression of the sM protein and consider its possible function. Although the available information is modest, it already seems clear that the sM protein may have a more important role in the biology of coronaviruses than has been recognized previously.