Hepatitis C virus (HCV) causes chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and liver cancer, and is a major worldwide human health problem. Introduction of highly effective direct-acting antiviral agents has greatly improved the therapeutic treatment of chronic hepatitis C in recent years, but new challenges remain such as viral drug-resistant mutations. Furthermore, lack of HCV vaccine makes it impossible to eradicate HCV globally. As a highly variable RNA virus, HCV renders a unique model to study virus-host interactions particularly for its association with host lipoproteins. Our main interest is to elucidate the molecular basis of virus-host interactions during HCV infection, which may contribute to the prevention and better treatment of HCV infection. On the other hand, we hope that our research will help address important basic scientific questions in the field of virology, immunology and cell biology. In the last several years, our research interests have been expanded to other medically important RNA viruses, such as Zika virus and Ebola virus.