Identification of a novel antiviral factor that reorganises Microtubules
A study by the laboratory LP2L led by Yuxin SONG, PhD student benefiting from an international grant from the China Scholarship Council (CSC Scholarships) within the framework of the ENS-CSC program, has just identified a new cellular protein, Trim69, as a broad viral inhibitor against HIV-1, primate lentiviruses, Vesicular Stomatitis Virus (VSV) and SARS-CoV-2. The authors show that Trim69 acts by reorganizing the network of microtubules and therefore interferes with the highways that viruses take when infecting a cell. These results pave the way for further studies on the functional diversity of microtubules and their interaction with viruses.