Cell membrane proteins with high N-glycosylation, high expression and multiple interaction partners are preferred by mammalian viruses as receptors

Motivation: Receptor mediated entry is the first step for viral infection. However, the question of how viruses select receptors remains unanswered.

Results: Here, by manually curating a high-quality database of 268 pairs of mammalian virus-host receptor interaction, which included 128 unique viral species or sub-species and 119 virus receptors, we found the viral receptors are structurally and functionally diverse, yet they had several common features when compared to other cell membrane proteins: more protein domains, higher level of N-glycosylation, higher ratio of self-interaction and more interaction partners, and higher expression in most tissues of the host. This study could deepen our understanding of virus-receptor interaction.

Availability and implementation: The database of mammalian virus-host receptor interaction is available at http://www.computationalbiology.cn: 5000/viralReceptor.

Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.