Alphaviruses represent a serious public health threat and cause a wide variety of diseases, ranging from severe encephalitis, which can result in death or neurological sequelae, to mild infection, characterized by fever, skin rashes, and arthritis. In the infected cells, alphaviruses express only four nonstructural proteins, which function in the synthesis of virus-specific RNAs and in modification of the intracellular environment. The results of our study suggest that Sindbis virus (SINV) infection in BHK-21 cells leads to the formation of at least two types of nsP3-containing complexes, one of which was found in association with the plasma membrane and endosome-like vesicles, while the second was coisolated with cell nuclei. The latter complexes could be solubilized only with the cytoskeleton-destabilizing detergent. Besides viral nsPs, in the mammalian cells, both complexes contained G3BP1 and G3BP2 (which were found in different ratios), YBX1, and HSC70. Rasputin, an insect cell-specific homolog of G3BP1, was found in the nsP3-containing complexes isolated from mosquito cells, which was suggestive of a high conservation of the complexes in the cells of both vertebrate and invertebrate origin. The endosome-and plasma membrane-associated complexes contained a high concentration of double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs), which is indicative of their function in viral-RNA synthesis. The dsRNA synthesis is likely to efficiently proceed on the plasma membrane, and at least some of the protein-RNA complexes would then be transported into the cytosol in association with the endosome-like vesicular organelles. These findings provide new insight into the mechanism of SINV replication and virus-host cell interactions.The genus Alphavirus in the family Togaviridae contains a number of widely distributed human and animal pathogens. Some of the alphaviruses, including Venezuelan (VEEV), eastern, and western equine encephalitis viruses, constitute a serious public health threat in the United States (53,63,65,66) and cause severe encephalitis in humans and animals that can result in death or neurological sequelae (10,21,27,41). Other family members cause a mild infection, a self-limited febrile illness characterized by fever, skin rashes, and arthritis (21). In spite of differences in their abilities to cause disease, alphaviruses demonstrate strong homology in their encoded proteins and appear to have similar mechanisms of RNA replication (59). Under natural conditions, alphaviruses circulate between mosquito vectors, in which they cause a persistent, life-long infection, and vertebrate hosts, in which the infection is always acute and characterized by a short-term, high-titer viremia that is required for infection of new mosquitoes during blood meals (64). Thus, alphaviruses are capable of replicating in both vertebrate and invertebrate cells and, accordingly, utilize very different intracellular environments for the efficient synthesis of virus-specific RNAs and the production of viral particles.The alphavirus genome is a single-...