A new map of the coronavirus's inner wiring points to drug targets the virus can't easily change

Viruses evolve fast, which is why yesterday's drug can stop working. A team at UC San Diego and UC Riverside went looking for parts of the coronavirus that cannot change so easily: the places where its genetic instructions physically grip the proteins that copy it. Published in Nature Communications, their genome-scale map charted previously unknown interactions between SARS-CoV-2's RNA and three of its key proteins — NSP8, NSP12 and N — and showed that disrupting those grip points significantly reduced the virus's ability to replicate. Because the machinery is shared across coronaviruses, targets like these could help scientists build treatments that stay useful even as the virus mutates — a sturdier kind of antiviral for this virus and its cousins.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation