Of note, the BER pathway has been shown to play a pivotal role in repairing DNA damage, especially for 8‐oxoG lesions (Fouquerel et al., 2019), as we have recently reported that PGC‐1α and mtTFA are repressed in CD4+ T cells and play a role in compromised mitochondrial functions in the setting of chronic viral infection (Schank et al., 2020; Zhao et al., 2021). Here, TFAM is linked to viral infectious disease.