Lipid Droplets as Potential Antiviral Targets for Flaviviruses

Abstract

Lipid droplets (LDs) are intracellular sites for neutral lipid storagecritical for lipid metabolism and energy homeostasis. Structurally, LDshave a rich lipid content but they also contain several functionally diversetypes of proteins, including already described pro and antiviral relevantfactors. New roles for LDs in immunity have been uncovered, withevidence that they act as assembly and replication platforms for specificviruses and as reservoirs for proteins that counteract intracellularpathogens. LDs might also have potential implications for mechanisms ofcell proliferation and differentiation, affecting viral replication. Cellpathological conditions have been noticed to share an altered lipogenesisphenotype. However, the mechanisms that regulate LDs formation orconsumption and how their function impacts the cellular biology remainunknown. These evidences led us to investigate the effect of the alterationof LDs abundance during the replication of mosquito-transmittedflaviviruses. Our in vitro studies show that there is a decreased LDscontent in dengue, Zika and yellow fever infected cells, demonstratingthat these structures might be essential for diverse RNA virus life cycleand could be considered a novel antiviral target.