Upon viral infection, the intracellular retinoic acid-inducible gene-I (RIG-I)-like receptors (RLRs), such as RIG-I and melanoma differentiation-associated gene-5 (MDA-5), interact with viral RNA (Saito and Gale, 2008) and subsequently activate the adaptor protein mitochondrial antiviral signalling (MAVS) at mitochondria (Kawai et al., 2005; Meylan et al., 2005; Seth et al., 2005; Xu et al., 2005), peroxisomes (Dixit et al., 2010) and mitochondrial-associated membranes (MAMs) (Horner et al., 2011). The gene discussed is IFIH1; the disease is viral infectious disease.