Assembly of many spherical virus capsids is guided by an internal scaffolding protein or group of proteins that are often cleaved and eliminated in connection with maturation and incorporation of the genome. In cytomegalovirus there are at least two proteins that contribute to this scaffolding function; one is the maturational protease precursor (pUL80a), and the other is the assembly protein precursor (pUL80.5) encoded by a shorter genetic element within UL80a. Yeast GAL4 two-hybrid assays established that both proteins contain a carboxyl-conserved domain that is required for their interaction with the major capsid protein (pUL86) and an amino-conserved domain (ACD) that is required for their self-interaction and for their interaction with each other. In the work reported here, we demonstrate that when the ACD is deleted (␦ACD) or disrupted by a point mutation (L47A), the bacterially expressed mutant protein sediments as a monomer during rate-velocity centrifugation, whereas the wild-type protein sediments mainly as oligomers. We also show that the L47A mutation reduces the production of infectious virus by at least 90%, results in the formation of irregular nuclear capsids, gives rise to tube-like structures in the nucleus that resemble the capsid core in cross-section and contain UL80 proteins, slows nuclear translocation of the major capsid protein, and may slow cleavage by the maturational protease. We provide physical corroboration that mutating the ACD disrupts self-interaction of the UL80 proteins and biological support for the proposal that the ACD has a critical role in capsid assembly and production of infectious virus.A common feature among viruses with a spherical capsid is their use of a transient internal scaffolding structure to coordinate assembly of the capsid shell (7,11,13,17,32). Among the herpes group viruses this scaffold is made up of at least two essential proteins. These are encoded by UL80a and UL80.5 in human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) (17,38,39) and have counterparts in the other herpesviruses (12,22,36,39). UL80a, the longer of the two CMV open reading frames (ORFs), specifies the 74-kDa viral maturational protease precursor (pPR), and contains genes for three additional independently synthesized proteins. All four are in frame and carboxy coterminal, such that the amino acid sequence of the smaller proteins is identical to the sequence of the carboxyl end of the larger proteins (22, 39), as illustrated in Fig. 1. UL80.5 specifies the most abundant of the UL80 proteins, which is called the assembly protein precursor (pAP) and is the core component of the scaffold.The requirement for these proteins during capsid formation and maturation has been demonstrated by using mutant viruses (10, 15, 29, 41) and a recombinant-baculovirus herpes simplex virus (HSV) capsid assembly system (33, 34). In the absence of a pAP homolog (i.e., HSV pUL26.5 or preVP22a), the formation of closed spherical capsids is disrupted, and aberrantly shaped particles accumulate in the nucleus without forming infectiou...