ResearchBlogging.org News

Vincent Racaniello selects several notable posts each week from molecular and cellular biology and virology. He blogs at virology blog.

• We get measles once in our lifetimes but influenza much more frequently. Both viruses encode error-prone RNA polymerases, but the influenza glycoproteins are structurally more plastic than the measles counterparts – leading to escape from neutralizing antibodies.
• Drugs that target host functions required for viral replication are attractive as antivirals because viral escape mutants are less likely to emerge. But when they do, new viral functions may develop.
• In polyglutamine disorders such as Huntington’s disease, multiple CAG codons accumulate as a result of replication errors. Gene silencing may be used to treat these diseases because RNAi may be designed to target only the mutant allele.

I’ll be back next Friday with more selections.