A team of researchers has made an important discovery regarding the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the virus that caused the global COVID-19 pandemic.
In the study, published in Nature communicationsThe researchers explain that this virus produces a particular enzyme, called nsp16, to change its messenger RNA cap and then enter the body’s cells without “sounding the alarm”, as Yogesh Gupta, lead author of the study, explains. study.
It is a kind of “cover-up” caused by the changes the virus itself makes to trick cells. After the modification of the RNA, the virus is considered to be part of the cell code and is therefore no longer foreign.
The researchers themselves suggest that drugs could be made to stop the nsp16 enzyme from making these changes so that the immune system can intervene against the virus, which would then be recognized as foreign.
The discovery is “a fundamental advance in our understanding of the virus,” said Robert Hromas, professor at the Long School of Medicine at the University of Texas at San Antonio, another of the study’s authors.
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