We are starting the new year with the excellent news of Parisa's new paper in bioRXiv .
We had shown in the past that the cap-binding protein 4EHP is a critical component of the mechanism that mediates the microRNA-induced translational silencing of the target mRNAs and that this mechanism is co-opted by by some RNA-viruses to repress expression of Interferon ß expression by the host cells. Last year we also reported that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARSCoV-2) encoded non-structural protein 2 (NSP2) functions as a repressor of cellular mRNA translation via direct binding and stabilisation of the GIGYF2/4EHP complex. However, it was not known whether and how NSP2 affects miRNA-mediated silencing, which also utilises the GIGYF2/4EHP complex for translational repression of target mRNAs. In this new paper, Parisa provides evidence of a pervasive effect of NSP2 on miRNA-mediated silencing. We show that besides GIGYF2, NSP2 also interacts with AGO2, the main component of the miRNA-Induced Silencing Complex (miRISC) and enhances the translational repression of their target mRNAs.