Dynamic Propagation Properties of Virus-Host Protein Interaction Network

Viruses are devastating pathogens of humans, animals, and plants and virus infection mechanism is an important subject of virology and pathology research. To further our understanding of how viruses use the resource of infected cells, we systematically tested virus-yeast PPI network for the effect of virus perturbation on host proteins. Two viruses used in our study interact with vastly different yeast genes, since they belong to different sub-groups among plus-strand RNA virus. This fact provides us a convenience to focus on their common host targets, consequently revealing virus propagation properties hidden in the background: (1) virus infection tends to use or alter a few host pathways and (2) hubs and bottlenecks are not the host targets of virus proteins.