miniMAVS you complete me!

摘要

Brubaker and colleagues describe translation of two distinct mammalian proteins, MAVS and miniMAVS, from a single bicistronic mRNA. Interestingly, miniMAVS antagonizes the ability of full length MAVS to stimulate type I interferon production during viral infection. The authors also find evidence that several additional innate immune effectors may use bicistronic mRNAs to encode multiple protein variants, suggesting that non-canonical translation may be a common feature of innate immune regulation.