Paving the way to new antiviral drugs
With an alarm code, we can enter a building without bells going off. It turns out that the SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has the same advantage entering cells. It possesses the code to just walk right into our body
On July 24 in Nature Communications, researchers reported how the coronavirus achieves this.
The scientists resolved the structure of an enzyme, which the virus produces and then uses to modify its "code," messenger RNA, said Yogesh Gupta, PhD, the study lead author from the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine.
This discovery lays the groundwork for designing novel antiviral drugs.