HIV1 performs highly complex orchestrated tasks during the assembly, budding, maturation and infection stages of the viral replication cycle. During viral assembly, the proteins form membrane associations and self-associations that ultimately result in budding of an immature virion from the infected cell. Gag precursors also function during viral assembly to selectively bind and package two plus strands of genomic RNA. p55 is digested by HIV1 protease into intermediate products p41 and p15. p41 is further digested into matrix protein p17 and capsid protein p24. Likewise, p15 is further digested into nucleocapsid protein p7 and to p6 and p1.