New insights on how bird flu crosses the species barrier

How a key avian influenza virus enzyme can mutate to allow the virus to replicate in mammals

21-Aug-2024 - In recent years, public health measures, surveillance, and vaccination have helped bring about significant progress in reducing the impact of seasonal flu epidemics, caused by human influenza viruses A and B. However, a possible outbreak of avian influenza A (commonly known as ‘bird flu’) in ...

Snapshots of the flu virus replication machine in action

05-Jun-2019 - Researchers from EMBL Grenoble have, for the first time, observed different functional states of the influenza virus polymerase as it is actively transcribing. These results, published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, provide valuable information for the next generation of anti-influenza ...

Bigger, better, faster

3D structure reveals protein’s Swiss-army knife strategy

28-Oct-2013 - The molecular machine that makes essential components of ribosomes – the cell’s protein factories – is like a Swiss-army knife, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas in Madrid, Spain, have found. By ...