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Thursday, April 29, 2010

World : A clamp for emerging flu viruses

Via Physorg:

" 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 German virologists from the Institute of Medical Microbiology at the Freiburg University Medical Center and structural biologists from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Berlin-Buch have unraveled the structure of the Mx protein and are able to explain how it develops its anti-viral effect.

New influenza viruses jump from animals to humans with alarming frequency, as evidenced by the virus or, more recently, with the virus. Although humans usually do not have any preexisting immunity to such pathogens, they are not completely unprotected against the invaders. The human body can rapidly mobilize a defense strategy which prevents the influenza viruses from proliferating unchecked in the body.

An essential element of this protection is a protein, known as Mx (short for myxovirus resistance), produced by the body which recognizes many viruses and prevents them from replicating inside infected cells. Under normal conditions this protective protein is not present in the cell at all, but after infection it can be produced in large quantities. The order to produce this protein Mx is made by the signaling protein , which is excreted by infected cells and alarms the organism of the ."

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