Host Cell Factors Necessary for Influenza A Infection: Meta-Analysis of Genome Wide Studies

The Influenza A virus belongs to the Orthomyxoviridae family. Influenza virus infection occurs yearly in all countries of the world. It usually kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people and causes severe illness in millions more. Over the last century alone we have seen 3 global influenza pandemics. The great human and financial cost of this disease has made it the second most studied virus today, behind HIV. Recently, several genome-wide RNA interference studies have focused on identifying host molecules that participate in Influenza infection. We used nine of these studies for this meta-analysis. Even though the overlap among genes identified in multiple screens was small, network analysis indicates that similar protein complexes and biological functions of the host were present. As a result, several host gene complexes important for the Influenza virus life cycle were identified. The biological function and the relevance of each identified protein complex in the Influenza virus life cycle is further detailed in this paper.