The herpes simplex virus UL56 gene is conserved among most members of the Alphaherpesvirinae family and plays a critical role in viral pathogenicity in vivo. The HSV-2 UL56 protein (UL56) is a C-terminally anchored type II membrane protein that is predicted to be inserted into the virion envelope, leaving its N-terminal domain in the tegument. UL56 interacts with KIF1A and UL11. Here we report that UL56 also interacts with the ubiquitin ligase Nedd4 and increases its ubiquitination. Nedd4 was identified as a UL56-interacting protein by a yeast two-hybrid screen. UL56 bound to Nedd4 via its PY motifs. Nedd4 was phosphorylated and degraded in wild-type HSV-2-infected cells but not in cells infected with a UL56-deficient mutant. Ubiquitination assays revealed that UL56 increased ubiquitinated Nedd4, which was actively degraded in infected cells. UL56 also caused a decrease in Nedd4 protein levels and the increased ubiquitination in cotransfected cells. However, UL56 itself was not ubiquitinated, despite its interaction with Nedd4. Based on these findings, we propose that UL56 regulates Nedd4 in HSV-2-infected cells, although deletion of UL56 had no apparent effect on viral growth in vitro.Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is a large, enveloped DNA virus with a genome possessing at least 74 different genes (19,46). Although approximately half of the HSV genes are not essential for replication in vitro, all of these accessory gene products are predicted to play indispensable roles in viral replication and dissemination in vivo (57).The HSV UL56 gene is an accessory gene that most members of the Alphaherpesvirinae family possess homologs for (except bovine herpes virus-1 and -5) (1,17,19,22,29,34,37,46,53,(65)(66)(67)(68)(69)(70); M. Schwyzer, V. Paces, G. J. Letchworth, V. Misra, H. J. Buhk, D. E. Lowery, C. Simard, L. J. Bello, E. Thiry, and C. Vlcek, 1995, complete DNA sequence of bovine herpesvirus 1. GenBank database [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genbank/index .html] accession number NC_001847) and has been shown to play an important role in HSV type 1 (HSV-1) pathogenicity in vivo. UL56-deficient HSV-1 mutants are substantially less neuroinvasive (4, 58), although little is known molecularly about how this attenuation occurs. HSV-2 UL56 is a 235-amino-acid, C-terminally anchored, type II membrane protein (39) that is predicted to be inserted into the viral envelope so that the N-terminal domain is located in the virion tegument. In this topology, UL56 is predicted to have a 216-amino-acid cytoplasmic domain. UL56 associates with the neuron-specific kinesin KIF1A (41) and the HSV-2 protein UL11 (40). KIF1A is involved in the axonal transport of synaptic vesicle precursors (51), and its association with UL56 suggests that UL56 may affect vesicular transport in infected neurons. UL11 is a tegument protein that is involved in the envelopment and egress of viral nucleocapsids (3) and has dynamic membrane-trafficking properties (45). UL56 may specifically promote UL11 function in virion envelopment and egress in infected neur...