Viral protein involved in a direct and specific interaction with a host macromolecule. Viruses interact with many cellular pathways to achieve their replication cycle. Entry into the host cell, transport to the viral replication sites or viral budding are all steps that require interaction between the host and the virus. Additionally, the evasion from the host immune response requires a lot of viral proteins to associate with and inhibit cellular proteins with antiviral functions.
Protein involved in immunity, any immune system process that functions in the response of an organism to a potential internal or invasive threat. The vertebrate immune system is formed by the innate immune system (composed of phagocytes, complement, antimicrobial peptides, etc) and by the adaptive immune system which consists of T- and B- lymphocytes.
A reference proteome is a set of protein sequences derived from a complete proteome which constitutes a defined standard for a particular user community. Reference proteomes are manually defined according to a number of criteria. They cover the proteomes of well- studied model organisms and other proteomes of interest for biomedical and biotechnological research. Reference proteomes have been selected to provide broad coverage of the tree of life, and constitute a representative cross-section of the taxonomic diversity to be found within UniProtKB.