After viral infection, IRF7 is phosphorylated by TBK1, and it forms a homodimer and migrates to the nucleus, where it binds to the IFN-β promoter to initiate IFN-β transcription (Sun and Hornung, 2022, Gao et al., 2019, Lin et al., 2000). Here, TBK1 is linked to viral infectious disease.