1.G.3.1.9
Zika viroporin, ZikV-M (the M protein) of 75 aas and 1 C-terminal TMS. Flaviviruses contain several important human pathogens. Among these, the Zika virus is an emerging etiological agent. One of its structural proteins, prM, plays an essential role in viral maturation and assembly, making it an attractive drug and vaccine development target. Tomar et al. 2022 have characterized ZikV-M as a potential viroporin candidate using three different bacterium-based assays which were used to identify potential ZikV-M blockers. Mutational analyses of conserved amino acids in the transmembrane domain of other flaviviruses, including West Nile and Dengue viruses, were performed to study their role in ion channel activity. Thus, ZikV-M is a potential ion channel that can be used as a drug target for high throughput screening and drug repurposing (Tomar et al. 2022). P2X7R is expressed in cancer and immune system cell surfaces. ATP plays a key role in numerous metabolic processes due to its abundance in the tumour microenvironment. P2X7R plays an important role in cancer by interacting with ATP. The unusual property of P2X7R is that stimulation with low doses of ATP causes the opening of a permeable channel for sodium, potassium, and calcium ions, whereas sustained stimulation with high doses of ATP favours the formation of a non-selective pore. The latter effect induces a change in intracellular homeostasis that leads to cell death.