Sweet talk: Metabolic conversations between host and microbe during infection

Abstract

In this issue, we introduce the second part of a series of reviews focusing on how immunometabolism influences host and pathogen interactions during infection. This part of the collection addresses the interface between metabolism and specific types of infection, including immunometabolism in macrophages during helminth infection, the role of metabolism in T‐cell exhaustion during chronic viral infections and host immunometabolism in the defence against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. These reviews, together with the four articles published in part 1 of the series in November 2020, offer new insights into the complex interactions between mammalian hosts and microbial pathogens through the lens of cellular metabolic regulation.

Kynurenine-3-monooxygenase (KMO) broadly inhibits viral infections via triggering NMDAR/Ca2+ influx and CaMKII/ IRF3-mediated IFN-β production

“…Frequent outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, including SARS-CoV-2, avian influenza H5N8, Zika virus (ZIKV), and Ebola virus (EBOV), have become a serious threat to global public health [1][2][3][4][5][6], and an urgent need in clinical practice is to explore the efficient and broad-spectrum antiviral agents against various viral infections. Increasing studies indicated the potential cross-talk between the immune responses to viral infections and the cellular metabolism in host cells [7,8]. In addition, viral infections may hijack the immune system and the metabolic system and thus cause metabolic disorders, including abnormal lipid metabolism, cardiovascular diseases, and neurological diseases [9][10][11].…”