Host-viral Interactions: Host factors in coronavirus replication and coronaviral strategies of immune evasion

Abstract

Be it the conscription of cofactors for replication, perturbation of cellular processes to create an advantageous microenvironment, or the necessary subversion of immune defenses for the purpose of effective propagation, the intricate interaction between the virus and its host is fundamental to the determination of virulence. An improved understanding of these events will not only allows us to gain new insights into the complicated field of coronavirus biology, but may also provide new directions for therapeutic interventions. Therefore, using primarily the prototypic IBV as our model coronavirus, we aspire to explore two aspects of virus host interactions in this dissertation. Firstly, through a genome wide RNA interference screen, we identified critical cellular cofactors that have roles in modulating coronavirus replication. In the second part of the thesis, we focused on understanding the interplay between coronavirus infection and host cell innate immune response. Coronaviral strategies of immune evasion were also examined