A clamp for emerging flu viruses
Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 06:20
in Health & Medicine
When the human body becomes infected with new influenza viruses, the immune system rapidly activates an inborn protective mechanism to inhibit the intruding pathogen. A protein known as Mx plays an important role in this process, keeping the spread of viruses in check. Exactly how Mx accomplishes this task was previously unknown. Now virologists from the Institute of Medical Microbiology at the Freiburg University Medical Centre and structural biologists from the Max Delbrueck Centre for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin-Buch, Germany, have unravelled the structure of the Mx protein and are able to explain how it develops its anti-viral effect...