Most membrane-enveloped viruses depend on host proteins of the endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) machinery for their release. HIV-1 is the prototypic ESCRT-dependent virus. The direct interactions between HIV-1 and the early ESCRT factors TSG101 and ALIX have been mapped in detail. However, the full pathway of ESCRT recruitment to HIV-1 budding sites, which culminates with the assembly of the late-acting CHMP4, CHMP3, CHMP2, and CHMP1 subunits, is less completely understood. Here, we report the biochemical reconstitution of ESCRT recruitment to viral assembly sites, using purified proteins and giant unilamellar vesicles. The myristylated full-length Gag protein of HIV-1 was purified to monodispersity. Myr-Gag forms clusters on giant unilamellar vesicle membranes containing the plasma membrane lipid PIð4,5ÞP 2 . These Gag clusters package a fluorescent oligonucleotide, and recruit early ESCRT complexes ESCRT-I or ALIX with the appropriate dependence on the Gag PTAP and LYPðXÞ n L motifs. ALIX directly recruits the key ESCRT-III subunit CHMP4. ESCRT-I can only recruit CHMP4 when ESCRT-II and CHMP6 are present as intermediary factors. Downstream of CHMP4, CHMP3 and CHMP2 assemble synergistically, with the presence of both subunits required for efficient recruitment. The very late-acting factor CHMP1 is not recruited unless the pathway is completed through CHMP3 and CHMP2. These findings define the minimal sets of components needed to complete ESCRT assembly at HIV-1 budding sites, and provide a starting point for in vitro structural and biophysical dissection of the system. confocal microscopy | host-pathogen interaction | membrane traffic | virus budding M ost membrane-enveloped viruses utilize host proteins of the endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) machinery for their release (1-3). This dependence was first described for HIV-1, where mutation of an ESCRTbinding motif (late domain) in the viral protein Gag was shown to stall virus bud release at a late stage in virus assembly (4, 5). Late domains have subsequently been found in other retroviruses and numerous other virus families including, e.g., flavi-, filo-and rhabdoviruses (6). Indeed, the only well-characterized case of ESCRT-independent release of a membrane-enveloped virus is influenza virus (7). In normal cell physiology, ESCRTs function in cytokinesis, formation of intralumenal vesicles in multivesicular endosomes, and vesicle release from the plasma membrane (8-10). These seemingly disparate processes all involve membrane budding away from the cytoplasm, and ESCRTs are the only described protein machinery to perform vesicle formation with this topology, which is analogous to virus release.The initial events in HIV-1 ESCRT recruitment are well characterized. The structural protein of HIV-1, Gag, binds earlyacting ESCRT factors through two late-domain motifs in its C-terminal p6 domain: a PTAP sequence that interacts with the TSG101 subunit of ESCRT-I (11-16) and a LYPðXÞ n L motif that interacts with the ESCRT...