IFNA1 and bacterial infectious disease: While IFIT1 is an RNA-binding protein that can act as a sensor of viral single-stranded RNAs and inhibit viral mRNA expression, it has also been suggested to function as a negative regulator of inflammatory mediator production and a defective IFIT1-dependent IFN response has been shown to increase susceptibility to intracellular bacterial infection (John et al., 2018).