Phosphorylation enables allosteric control of a viral condensate

Abstract

In many viruses, intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) drive the formation of replicative organelles essential for viral production. In species A rotaviruses, the disordered protein NSP5 forms condensates in cells via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). Yet the sequence diversity of NSP5 raises the question of whether condensate formation is conserved across all strains and if distinct variants employ alternative mechanisms for nucleating phase separation. Using a machine learning approach, we demonstrate that NSP5 variants differ significantly in their propensity to phase-separate. We engineered a variant incorporating amino acid signatures from strains with low LLPS tendency, which failed to phase separate in vitro yet supported the formation of replicative condensates in recombinant viruses in cells. Low-tendency LLPS strains require phosphorylation of NSP5 to nucleate phase separation, whereas high-tendency strains do not, suggesting distinct nucleation mechanisms. Furthermore, hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry revealed a phosphorylation-driven allosteric switch between binding sites on the high-propensity variant. These findings establish that phosphorylation plays a context-dependent role in the formation of replicative organelles across diverse rotaviruses.