Simulations Describe HIV's Diabolical Delivery Device
June 16th 2016From 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 like HIV-AIDS, Ebola, and Zika, scientists need to understand the "life cycle" of the virus and design drugs to interrupt it. But seeing what virus proteins do inside living cells is extremely difficult, even with the most powerful imaging technologies. Now, University of Chicago scientists and their colleagues have developed an innovative computer model of HIV that gives real insight into how a virus "matures" and becomes infective. In doing so, it offers the prospect of help developing new anti-viral drugs and greatly extends what has been possible with computer simulations of biological systems. Their findings appeared in the May 13 edition of Nature Communications.
Super-Resolution Microscopy Reveals Unprecedented Detail of Immune Cells' Surface
June 16th 2016When the body is fighting an invading pathogen, white blood cells--including T cells--must respond. Now, Salk Institute researchers have imaged how vital receptors on the surface of T cells bundle together when activated. This study, the first to visualize this process in lymph nodes, could help scientists better understand how to turn up or down the immune system's activity to treat autoimmune diseases, infections or even cancer. The results were published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Chemical Structure Paves the Way for New Broad-Spectrum Antifungals
June 14th 2016Fungal infections can be devastating to human health, killing approximately 150 people every hour, resulting in more than 1 million deaths every year, more than malaria and tuberculosis combined. Unfortunately the antifungal drug arsenal is limited, with many of the best drugs more than 50 years old. The search for new antifungals has recently alighted on a simple biological pathway, the production of trehalose, a chemical cousin to table sugar that pathogenic fungi need to survive in their human hosts. A team of Duke researchers has solved the structure of an enzyme that is required to synthesize this fungal factor.
A New Way to Nip AIDS in the Bud
June 10th 2016When new AIDS virus particles bud from an infected cell, an enzyme named protease activates to help the viruses mature and infect more cells. That's why modern AIDS drugs control the disease by inhibiting protease. Now, University of Utah researchers found a way to turn protease into a double-edged sword: They showed that if they delay the budding of new HIV particles, protease itself will destroy the virus instead of helping it spread. They say that might lead, in about a decade, to new kinds of AIDS drugs with fewer side effects.