Structural insight into African swine fever virus I73R protein reveals it as a Z-DNA binding protein

African Swine Fever (ASF) is a highly contagious viral haemorrhagic disease of swine, leading to enormous economic losses in the swine industry. However, vaccines and drugs to treat ASF have yet to be developed. African swine fever virus (ASFV) encodes more than 150 proteins, but 50% of them have unknown functions. Here, we present the crystal structure of the ASFV I73R protein at a resolution of 2.0 Å. Similar search tools based solely on amino acid sequence shows that it has no relationships to any proteins of known function. Interestingly, the overall structure of the I73R protein shares a winged helix-turn-helix fold, structural similarity with the Z-DNA binding domain (Zα). In accordance with this result, the I73R is capable of binding to a CpG repeats DNA duplex, which has a high propensity for forming Z-DNA during the DNA binding assays. In addition, the I73R protein was shown to be expressed at both early and late stages of ASFV post-infection in PAM cells as an 8.9 kDa protein. Immunofluorescence studies revealed that the I73R protein is expressed in the nucleus at early times post-infection and gradually translocated from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. Taken together, these data indicate that the I73R could be a member of Zα family that is important in host-pathogen interaction, which paves the way for the design of inhibitors to target this severe pathogen. Further exploring the biological role of I73R during ASFV infection in vitro and in vivo will provide new clues for development of new antiviral strategies.