The world is striving to understand how a virus can be devastatingly infectious and have a profound impact on our lives. Researchers from the University of Leeds have discovered for the first time how viruses, such as the common cold, make themselves highly infectious. They stated that this process relies on the viruses themselves altering and pumping out their genetic code, allowing them to enter and infect new cells.
These groundbreaking findings open the door to the development of new drugs or vaccines to combat viruses, potentially stopping any future viral pandemic or infection before it occurs. According to the researchers, once the virus infects a single cell, it seeks to spread its genetic material to surrounding cells. This "viral spread" process is a complex ordeal involving the creation of new viruses through replication. The newly copied versions of the virus become more infectious than the original virus they were copied from, as each of these new viruses contains a protein coat encapsulating a complete copy of the parental virus's genetic code. These viruses then move on to infect other cells, ultimately spreading the disease.
Until now, scientists have been puzzled about how exactly viruses "assemble" these new viruses that are replicated from the parent virus. Professor Peter Stockley, the former director of the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology at Leeds and the lead author of the study, stated, "This study is immensely important due to the way it changes our thinking about how to control certain viral diseases." He added, "If we can disrupt the mechanism of virus formation, there's a possibility to stop the infection in its tracks. Our analysis suggests that the molecular features controlling the virus formation process are evolutionarily conserved, meaning they do not evolve easily, which might reduce the risk of viral mutation but also make any new drugs or vaccines ineffective."
It is noteworthy that this study was conducted in collaboration with the University of York, bringing together some of the world’s leading experts in viral structural biology, electron microscopy, and mathematical biology.
### The Key Role of Viral RNA
During the study, the authors analyzed the "Enterovirus-E," a cow virus that is harmless to humans. Scientists regarded this virus as the globally adopted surrogate for the poliovirus but noted that common cold viruses are also part of the larger group of enteroviruses. According to Professor Stockley, "Much of the results from this study depend on the RNA packaging signals found in short regions of the viral RNA molecule that interact with proteins in the viral coat to facilitate the formation of infectious virus copies."
By combining molecular and mathematical biology, the researchers successfully identified potential sites on the RNA molecule that may act as packaging protein signals. Subsequently, using advanced electron microscopy, the team was able to witness the entire viral assembly and replication process. Professor Redon Tuaruk, a co-author of the study, summarized, "A detailed understanding of how this process works, and the fact that it appears to be conserved across an entire family of viral pathogens, will enable the pharmaceutical industry to develop antiviral drugs and vaccines that can prevent these key interactions and guard against future diseases."
