Division of labor between IRF1 and IRF2 in regulating different stages of transcriptional activation in cellular antiviral activities

Background Cellular antiviral activities are critically controlled by transcriptional activation of interferon-inducible genes, involving interferon regulatory factors (IRFs). Previous data suggested that IRF1 is an activator and IRF2 is a repressor, which functionally antagonize each other in transcriptional regulation. However, it is not clear how these two factors function to regulate cellular antiviral activities.