**Lipid Involvement in Viral Infections: Present and Future Perspectives for the Design of Antiviral Strategies**

Miguel A. Martín-Acebes, Ángela Vázquez-Calvo, Flavia Caridi, Juan-Carlos Saiz and Francisco Sobrino

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/51068

### **1. Introduction**

290 Lipid Metabolism

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[72] Yoshida Y., Yokoi W., Wada Y., Ohishi K., Ito M., Sawada H. Potent hypocholesterolemic activity of the yeast *Kluyveromyces marxianus* YIT 8292 in rats fed a Viruses constitute important pathogens that can infect animals, including humans and plants. Despite their great diversity, viruses share as a common feature the dependence on host cell factors to complete their replicative cycle. Among the cellular factors required by viruses, lipids play an important role on viral infections [1-4]. The involvement of lipids in the infectious cycle is shared by enveloped viruses (those viruses whose infectious particle is wrapped by one or more lipid membranes) and non-enveloped viruses [1-4]. Apart from taking advantage on cellular lipids that are usually located inside cells, viruses induce global metabolic changes on infected cells, leading to the rearrangement of the lipid metabolism to facilitate viral multiplication [1,5-11]. In some cases, these alterations produce the reorganization of intracellular membranes of the host cell, building the adequate microenvironment for viral replication [12,13]. All these findings highlight the intimate connections between viruses and lipid metabolism. Along this line, modulation of cellular lipid metabolism to interfere with virus multiplication is currently raising as a feasible antiviral approach [6,14].
