EIF2AK2 and viral infectious disease: During viral infection, cellular stress pathways are activated in the cell that normally lead to shutdown of protein translation via phosphorylation of translation initiation factor 2α (eIF-2α), e.g., by protein kinase R. Targeting eIF-2α for dephosphorylation by PP1 can re-enable translation, as done by Herpes simplex virus 1 (Li et al., 2011).