Another piece of Ebola virus puzzle identified

Ebola virus (red) replicates much faster in human macrophages depleted of RBBP6 protein (right panel). Credit: Texas Biomedical Research Institute A team of researchers have discovered the interaction between an Ebola virus protein and a protein in human cells that may be an important key to unlocking the pathway of replication of the killer disease in human hosts. Scientists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute were part of a nationwide collaborative with scientists at Gladstone Institutes, UC San Francisco and Georgia State University for a study recently published in the journal Cell. Scientists around the globe are trying to pinpoint potential drug targets to stop Ebola virus disease, a hemorrhagic fever that has killed 347 people thus far in the latest outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Thousands of people have died from Ebola since an outbreak erupted in West Africa four years ago. Texas Biomed Staff Scientist Olena Shtanko, Ph.D., describes this new work as a “turning point for understanding how replication...