Cell Rep: what's new! Identify a new universal target for developing antiviral therapy!

February 15, 2020 / BIOON/ --As the outbreak of coronavirus shows, virus infection will bring a continuous threat to human health Vaccines against specific virus infection need to be developed and studied regularly, but this process takes a lot of time, and it does not help everyone who needs to be protected, and it still exposes many people to new outbreaks and virus infection Photo source: cc0 public domain recently, in a research report published in the international journal Cell reports, scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital opened a new potential antiviral drug target through research, which may help researchers develop new universal therapies for multiple infectious diseases The researchers found that a special protein named agonaute 4, or the deadly key of the virus, is a member of the ago protein family Up to now, the researchers have not been very clear about why the protein is so important In this study, the researchers pointed out that ago4 protein plays a very important role in protecting host cells against virus infection Specifically, the protein is a special antiviral substance in mammalian immune cells In this paper, the researchers studied the antiviral effect of a variety of Argonaute proteins The results showed that only the protein without ago4 would become super sensitive to virus infection In other words, the low level of ago4 would make mammalian cells more susceptible to virus infection The goal of our research is to understand the working mechanism of the immune system, so that we can develop new therapies against a series of virus infections, rather than just a vaccine against a virus infection Mammals have four Argonaute proteins, even though argonaute1 - Argonaute 4 It can play a role by silencing gene expression, and has a high degree of conservation in many organisms, including plants It is the effector protein of RNAi and microRNA, and RNAi is the main anti-virus defense strategy in plants and invertebrates After the study of influenza infected mice, the researchers found that the level of virus in animals lacking ago4 It will increase significantly In the next step, researchers will conduct more in-depth research to clarify the broad-spectrum nature of this new strategy for virus types, and then researchers need to find out how to enhance the level of ago4 to enhance the body's ability to resist virus infection Original source: fatemeh adiliaghdam, Megha basav app a, tahnee L Saunders, et al A requirement for Argonaute 4 in mamalian antivirus defense, cell reports (2020) Doi: 10.1016/j.cellep.2020.01.021