Main protease of SARS-CoV-2 serves as a bifunctional molecule in restricting type I interferon antiviral signaling

At present, the world is suffering from an ongoing pandemic of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2/2019-nCoV). To date, >20 million cases were confirmed with a death toll at >700,000. Although there are no clinically specific and effective antiviral treatments toward SARS-CoV-2 infection so far, the pathological study of SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of SARS-CoV-2-specific vaccines are progressing rapidly within these several months. 1 However, few reports mentioned the mechanism employed by SARS-CoV-2 for evading from surveillance of immune system.