Foot-and-mouth disease virus activates glycolysis and hijacks HK2 to inhibit innate immunity and promote viral replication.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) severely restricts the healthy development of global animal husbandry, and the unclear pathogenic mechanism of FMD virus (FMDV) leads to difficulty in preventing and purifying FMD. Glycolytic remodelling is considered one of the hallmarks of viral infection, providing energy and precursors for viral assembly and replication. In this work, the interaction and mechanism between FMDV and glycolysis were explored from the perspective of immune metabolism. We found that FMDV infection increased the extracellular acidification rate, lactic acid accumulation, and HK2 level. In addition, during FMDV infection, HK2 enhances glycolytic activity and mediates autophagic degradation of IRF3/7 to antagonize the innate immune response, thereby promoting viral replication. Our findings provide evidence that FMDV is closely correlated with host metabolism, increasing the understanding that glycolysis and HK2 facilitate virus infection, and provide new ideas for further elucidating the pathogenic mechanism of FMDV.