The Penicillin of Viruses

You know what can turn an oh-my-god-can't-write-to-save-my-life day into a fairly nice one? Good Science News. Promising discoveries! Hope for our Cure-The-Sickness related future!

That's what happened when I found this article on MIT news. A team of researcher from the MIT Lincoln's laboratory developped a new drug that can identify cells infected by virus and terminate them. And that, my friend, is full of awesome.

The Problem with Treating Viruses

Viruses have this badass and terrifying strategy in which they infect the host's cells, hijack their resources and begin to multiply. The cell does have a few defenses to prevent this, but most viruses have found ways to bypass and counter these. Otherwise they wouldn't, you know, still exist.

The point is that once the virus is inside the host cell, it becomes difficult to distinguish from the non-infected cells. We manage to develop specific drugs for specific viruses by hindering their unique ways to act, but viruses have such a vast array of techniques and molecules that it is almost impossible to produce one drug that affects them all.

That is what the MIT's lab achieved. One drug for most viruses.

How the hell?

OK. This is the science part. Let's try and keep it simple. Every cell has DNA, on which we have carry genetic information. In order to access that information, we create an RNA molecule (think of it as a close-cousin of DNA) from the DNA, which is then read and transformed into a protein.

DNA is double-stranded in humans -- you've all seen the double helix image. RNA, however, is single stranded. Just one long string that twists.

Basic human scheme:  Double stranded DNA --> Single stranded RNA --> Protein

Here are the key points.
1. There is never any double stranded RNA in the human process.
2. There is almost always double stranded RNA in the viral duplication.

Todd Rider's drug identifies cells with double-stranded RNA inside them and hits their self-destruct button.*

 Magic!

And you know the best thing about this drug? It's called DRACO. Not just for fun. The acronym means something. It is also badass.

They tested the drug against influenza (your day-to-day cold) and dengue fever (a cousin of Ebola), and it worked. These are two very very very different viruses. At the moment they're trying DRACO on other viruses in mice before moving to bigger animals, and eventually humans. So it's not ready or finished yet, but one can hope.

And for those of you who want to see more of the science, the drug's action mecanism is explained in more details in the article. Plus pictures of their tests. It's neat!

*Yes, there is such a thing in cells. It's one of the most broken mecanism of cancer cells. Self-destruct buttons: not as useless as in sci-fi movies.

The Science that Creeps ME Out

Yesterday I asked you what aspect of science you found the most terrifying. Creepy. Shiver-inducing. I love the answers I got. It's fascinating how some of your fears are another person's great love, and how many are directly related to my field.

Not that I spend my time modifying the genetic bagagge of plants or animals. I spend my time trying to determine what makes leukemic cells grow faster and how -- which does mean, yes, that I am researching on ways to stave off cancer. And when I put it that way, I feel like a superhero!

Back on topic. It wouldn't be fair if I didn't share my own sciency fear.

Photo by Sebastian Kaulitzki

Viruses

It's not a particular virus that scares me. It's the way viruses are built. It's both fascinating and utterly terrifying.

Viruses are death machines on a microscopical level. The basic structure is a DNA or RNA strand, with the virus' information on it, protected by a capside (proteins). The virus, through many different ways, will try to force its DNA (or RNA, but I'll stop repeating RNA now) into a cell and hijack all its resources. 

Okay, a parasite like any other, no?

The scary thing comes in the virus' simple structure. I just explained it to you with a single sentence! One DNA strand and proteins. Yes, there are variations, but the simplest virus won't need anything else to invade and duplicate. 

There isn't a single DNA base wasted on a virus. Everything it needs to take over your cell is comprised in its strand, and the strand itself is super short. The smallest has 3,569 bases and needs only 20 minutes to kill a cell (it's a bacteria cell, we're safe!). The biggest has 1,181,404 bases. 

To compare, an E. coli (one of the simplest and most studied bacteria) has 4,600,000 and the human genome is 3,200,000,000.  If you do the math, that means that even the biggest virus has a genome that is 2709 times smaller than ours.

When a virus invades a cell, it forces it to create a hundred copies (on average) of itself. That means there are suddenly 100 more viruses in the environment that can invade other cells. And on it goes. 

Think about how efficient this is. If I had to find a way to wipe out any living organism, I'd tamper with a virus until it could infect and kill said organism.

Yes, we have defences. So does bacterias, and yet in 48 hours, phages (virus that solely infect bacterias) wipe out half the bacteria population.

Killing machines.

And that, my friends, is why my villain is a genetic engineer*. Because I'm terrified of what a genius could do if he managed to bypass ethic commitees and surveillance to develop his own super-viruses.

There you go! Nice fodder for the weekend, eh?



*If you're going to use viruses or other such things in your novel, I invite you to do the research for specific effects/modes of infection. OR, if you know what you want but aren't sure what viruses would do that, you can send yours truly an e-mail. I did have a whole class on the subject, and I'm aware how confusing it can get even when it's your domain.