How HIV smuggles its genetic material into the cell nucleus

New discovery might one day be exploited for better AIDS therapies

30-Jan-2024 - Around one million individuals worldwide become infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, each year. To replicate and spread the infection, the virus must smuggle its genetic material into the cell nucleus and integrate it into a chromosome. Research teams led by Dirk Görlich at the Max ...

Phage capsid against influenza

Perfectly fitting inhibitor prevents viral infection

31-Mar-2020 - A new approach brings the hope of new therapeutic options for suppressing seasonal influenza and avian flu: On the basis of an empty – and therefore non-infectious – shell of a phage virus, researchers from Berlin have developed a chemically modified phage capsid that “stifles” influenza viruses. ...

Findings could lead to treatment of hepatitis B

07-Jun-2018 - Researchers at the University of Delaware, working with colleagues at Indiana University, have gained new insights into the virus that causes hepatitis B -- a life-threatening and incurable infection that afflicts more than 250 million people worldwide. The discovery reveals previously unknown ...

Nanoscale virus delivers peptide drugs to cells, tissues

11-Jan-2018 - By chipping away at a viral protein, Rice University scientists have discovered a path toward virus-like, nanoscale devices that may be able to deliver drugs to cells. The protein is one of three that make up the protective shell, called the capsid, of natural adeno-associated viruses (AAV). By ...

Hydrophobic proteins on virus surfaces can help purify vaccines

27-Mar-2017 - A person doesn't have to get sick to catch a virus. Researchers hope to catch viruses for detection and vaccinations by understanding their sticky outer layers. The complex structures making the surface of a virus are small weaves of proteins that make a big impact on how a virus interacts with ...

Viral protein transforms as it measures out DNA

31-Jan-2017 - To generate swarms of new viral particles, a virus hijacks a cell into producing masses of self-assembling cages that are then loaded with the genetic blueprint for the next infection. But the picture of how that DNA is loaded into those viral cages, or capsids, was blurry, especially for two of ...

Simulations describe HIV's 'diabolical delivery device'

16-Jun-2016 - From a virus's point of view, invading our cells is a matter of survival. The virus makes a living by highjacking cellular processes to produce more of the proteins that make it up. From our point of view, the invasion can be a matter of survival too: surviving the virus. To combat viral diseases ...

New antiviral drugs could come from DNA 'scrunching'

10-Jun-2016 - Evidence of DNA "scrunching" may one day lead to a new class of drugs against viruses, according to a research team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Columbia University. The team is led by Stephen C. Harvey, PhD, an ...

Flu viruses disguised as waste

27-Oct-2014 - Viral infections always follow a similar course. The pathogen infiltrates the host cells and uses their replication and protein production machinery to multiply. The virus has to overcome the initial barrier by docking on the surface of the cell membrane. The cell engulfs the virus in a bubble ...

Two-lock box delivers cancer therapy

08-May-2014 - Rice University scientists have designed a tunable virus that works like a safe deposit box. It takes two keys to open it and release its therapeutic cargo. The Rice lab of bioengineer Junghae Suh has developed an adeno-associated virus (AAV) that unlocks only in the presence of two selected ...