Hijacking the host heparan sulfate-cell-surface ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) scaffold pathway for viral immune evasion
Wei Ye, Yangchao Dong, He Liu, Hongwei Ma, Yingfeng Lei, Fanglin Zhang · 2026
Read Hijacking the host heparan sulfate-cell-surface ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) scaffold pathway for viral immune evasion by Wei Ye, Yangchao Dong, He Liu, Hongwei Ma, Yingfeng Lei, Fanglin Zhang (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13556346.txt.
Description
Wei Ye and five colleagues offered in 2026 a fresh explanation for a long-standing puzzle: why viral shell proteins show up on the surface of infected cells. Recent work had shown that the cell surface carries a scaffold of heparan sulfate sugar chains holding RNA-binding proteins and loose RNA, which tunes immune signalling. The commentary argues that viruses hijack that scaffold for their own ends.
In the proposed model, viral nucleocapsid proteins take the place of the host proteins on the scaffold. Displayed there, they can soak up chemical messengers that would otherwise call immune cells to the infection site. Starved of those signals, immune cells fail to gather, and the virus gains room to spread. The idea unifies reports across many RNA virus families, some dating back more than four decades, and suggests new points where the trick could be blocked.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Wei Ye, Yangchao Dong, He Liu, Hongwei Ma, Yingfeng Lei, Fanglin Zhang |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 8704 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |