US scientists have published in the journal "Science" the first triple molecular map of a section of the emerging corona virus responsible for infecting human cells, an important step that may contribute to developing appropriate treatments and vaccines to cope with the epidemic.
The team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and the National Institutes of Health used the technology "Deep Electron Microscopy" (Nobel laureate in chemistry in 2017) to model a portion of the virus attached to human cells.
"We have inserted a foreign molecule into the human body to stimulate its immune system to proactively produce antibodies, so that it is ready to respond to any attack if it is infected with the virus," said scientist Jason McClellan, who led the study, told AFP.
McClellan has been studying with his team for many years, many other viruses of the same strain, especially severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and respiratory syndrome in the Middle East.
Based on this experiment and based on the genome that the Chinese published at the beginning of the epidemic, researchers were able to produce a stable version of the virus in the laboratory. The molecular structure they reached became available to researchers around the world.
Virologist Benjamin Newman at the University of "Texas A&M Texarkana" commented that "it is a clear structure for one of the most important proteins of the Corona virus, and it will help to understand how the virus is discovered and penetrated."
This discovery is expected to help researchers understand how to hide the epidemic and quell its activity by providing possible prescriptions for antiviral drugs for infected people and vaccines.