Sreemoyee Chatterjee
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Written By: Sreemoyee Chatterjee | Published : September 11, 2018 12:59 AM IST
Now a new way to check Zika virus replication
Now researchers can easily design artificial molecules capable of preventing virus replication process and check it from spreading, all thanks to scientists who have come up a new technique determining virus' interaction with a host's own RNA, stated a recent media report. The study has been published in Nature Methods and it also highlights how virus direct the host cell to create new virus particles, thereby replicating. RNA viruses like Ebola, Zika virus and more pose greatest threat for ushering in a pandemic across the world due to unavailability of effective vaccines and continue to emerge due to rapid evolution, highlights the media report. The genome codes of their proteins interact with the host cell machinery and till now the structure of viral RNA genomes were not explicitly known.
COMRADES (Crosslink Of Matched RNAs And DEep Sequencing) is the new technique developed by the scientists at the University of Cambridge to decide on the structure and interactions of Zika virus genome inside human cells. This open doors for designing a new generation of medicines that work by blocking virus-host RNA interactions, say the researchers.
They show that virus and the host RNA molecules can directly interact by 'base-pairing' along parts of their structure, stated the media report. These interactions can be potential targets for anti-viral therapies. This novel technique has been developed by Dr Omer Ziv along with a team of international scientists at the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gordon Institute.
