Similar dual anti-viral and pro-viral effects have recently been reported for PML (Newhart et al., 2013; Xu et al., 2016), and the H3.3-specific chaperone, HIRA, has been shown to both enhance and restrict viral infection depending on context (Placek et al., 2009; Rai et al., 2017). Here, HIRA is linked to viral infectious disease.