Viruses as 'Truffle Hounds': Molecular Tools for Untangling Brain Cellular Pathology

Abstract

The ability of viruses to evolve several orders of magnitude faster than their host cells has enabled them to exploit host cellular machinery by selectively recruiting multiprotein complexes (MPCs) for their catalyzed assembly and replication. This hijacking may depend on alternative, 'moonlighting' functions of host proteins that deviate from their canonical functions thereby inducing cellular pathology. Here, we posit that if virus-induced cellular pathology is similar to that of other, unknown (non-viral) causes, the identification and molecular characterization of the host proteins involved in virus-mediated cellular pathology can be leveraged to decipher the non-viral disease-relevant mechanisms. We focus on how virus-induced aberrant proteostasis and protein aggregation resemble the cellular pathology of sporadic neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) and how this can be exploited for drug discovery.

Keywords: drug discovery; host factors; multiprotein complexes; neurodegenerative disease; viruses.