Host and virus protein interaction studies in understanding shrimp virus gene function.

Protein-protein interaction studies have been widely used in several fields to characterize an unknown protein. This in turn helps to find out several pathways to understand a complex mechanism or discover a drug for treatment. Among the methods, yeast two-hybrid has widely been used in human, animal and plant research studies. This aspect of research has also been found useful in understanding the shrimp virus gene function. With respect to White spot syndrome virus, interaction studies have been applied to elucidate virus structure, understand the mode of entry of the virus, mechanism of virus replication and also to discover some of the host anti-viral proteins. Interaction studies on other shrimp viruses are scanty and only few reports available on Yellow head virus and Taura syndrome virus. All these findings are still in preliminary stage and lot more studies are necessary to have the clear picture. Protein interaction research on other shrimp viruses are still lacking. Considering all these, it appears that this field of research has a wide scope to understand the virulence mechanism of shrimp viruses where very little information is available till date.