Figure 4.

Overview of LDs-C protein interaction during the ZIKV life cycle. ZIKV infection promotes LDs formation at the early stages of infection. With the increasing interaction of LDs with ZIKV-C protein, lipophagy is induced to generate sufficient free fatty acids for robust viral replication and/or assembly. During this process, ZIKV NS4A/4B proteins may also contribute to the occurrence of lipophagy. We hypothesize that the eLDs and nLDs are involved in the ZIKV life cycle, and their formation and function possibly need the help of some unknown host factors, which are shown as red irregular polygons with a border of dashed lines.