How viruses use ‘fake’ proteins to hide in our cells

Some viruses can hide in our bodies for decades. They make ‘fake’ human proteins that trick our immune cells into thinking ‘everything is awesome’, there’s nothing to see here. Now researchers at the Imaging Centre of Excellence at Monash and Melbourne Universities have determined the basic structure of one of the two known families of these deceptive proteins. Using synchrotron light and working with a common virus that lives in people happily and for the most part harmlessly, they worked out the structure of the fake proteins. This is an important first step towards producing better vaccines and drugs to fight viral disease. The research was posted online this week by the Journal of Biological Chemistry. It will appear in the September issue of the journal. The paper describes the structure of m04 immunoevasin from mouse cytomegalovirus, a member of the m02 protein family. Cytomegaloviruses belong to the herpesvirus family whose members can cause...