Posted on 10/20/2023 10:58:14 AM PDT by Red Badger
Antiviral drugs are generally considered to be a 20th century invention. But recent research has uncovered an unexpected facet to your immune system: It can synthesize its own antiviral molecules in response to viral infections.
My laboratory studies a protein that makes these natural antiviral molecules. Far from a modern human invention, nature evolved cells to make their own “drugs” as the earliest defense against viruses.
How antivirals work
Viruses have no independent life cycle – they are completely dependent on the cells they infect to supply all the chemical building blocks needed to replicate themselves. Once inside a cell, the virus hijacks its machinery and turns it into a factory to make hundreds of new viruses.
Antiviral drugs are molecules that inactivate proteins essential to the functioning of the virus by exploiting the fundamental differences in the way that cells and viruses replicate.
One key difference between cells and most viruses is how they store their genetic information. All cells use DNA to store their genetic information. DNA is a long, chainlike molecule built from four different chemical building blocks, each representing a different “letter” of the genetic code. These building blocks are connected by chemical bonds in a head-to-tail fashion to produce strings of millions of letters. The order of these letters spells out the genetic blueprint for building a new cell.
Many viruses, however, store their genetic information using RNA. RNA is built from a chain of four chemical letters, just like DNA, but the letters have slightly different molecular structures. RNA is single-stranded, while DNA is double-stranded. Viral genomes are also much smaller than cellular genomes, typically only a few thousand letters long.
This diagram shows how four different classes of antiviral drugs inhibit HIV. One stops viruses from entering cells, and three inhibit different viral enzymes. Thomas Splettstoesser/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
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When a virus replicates, it makes many copies of its RNA genome using a protein called RNA polymerase. The polymerase starts at one end of the existing RNA chain and “reads” the string of chemical letters one at a time, selecting the appropriate building block and adding it to the growing strand of RNA. This process is repeated until the entire sequence of letters has been copied to form a new RNA chain.
One class of antiviral drugs interferes with the RNA copying process in a cunning way. The head-to-tail construction of the RNA chain requires each chemical letter to have two connection points – a head to connect to the previous letter and a tail to allow the following letter to be added on. These antivirals mimic one of the chemical letters but crucially lack the tail connection point. If the RNA polymerase mistakes the drug for the intended chemical letter and adds it to the growing RNA chain, the copying process stops because there is nothing to attach the next letter to. For this reason, this type of antiviral drug is called a chain-terminating inhibitor.
Viperin as antiviral producer
Previously, researchers thought that chain-terminating antiviral drugs were strictly a product of human ingenuity, developed from advances in scientific understanding of viral replication. However, the discovery that a protein in your cells named viperin synthesizes a natural chain-terminating antiviral has revealed a new side of your immune system.
Viperin works by chemically removing the tail connection point from one of the four RNA building blocks of a virus’s genome. This converts the building block into a chain-terminating antiviral drug.
This strategy has proved to be highly effective for treating viral infections. For example, the COVID-19 antiviral remdesivir works in this way. A viral RNA polymerase has to join together many thousands of letters to copy a virus’s genome, but an antiviral drug has to fool it only once to derail its copying. An incomplete genome lacks the necessary instructions to make a new virus and becomes useless.
Moreover, although cells also have their own polymerases, they never replicate RNA like viruses do. This potentially allows chain-terminating antiviral drugs to selectively inhibit viral replication, reducing unwanted side effects.
Clearly, viperin does not fully protect against all RNA viruses – otherwise no RNA viruses would make you sick. It seems that some viral RNA polymerases, such as those in poliovirus, have evolved to discriminate against the antiviral molecules that viperin synthesizes and blunt their effect. However, viperin is only one arm of your immune system, which includes specialized cells and proteins that protect you from infection in other ways.
Ancient antivirals
Scientists discovered viperin about 20 years ago while searching for genes that turn on in response to viral infections. However, figuring out what viperin actually does proved very challenging.
Viperin’s function was particularly puzzling because it resembles an ancient group of proteins called radical SAM enzymes that are usually found in bacteria and molds. Notably, radical SAM enzymes are extremely rare in animals. Exposure to air rapidly inactivates them, and researchers thought they likely didn’t work in people. It’s still unclear how viperin avoids inactivation.
This illustration shows the structure of viperin without (left) and with (right) an antiviral bound in its center. Soumi Ghosh and Neil Marsh/Journal of Biological Chemistry, CC BY-SA
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Researchers were clued in to viperin’s function when they noticed that the gene coding for viperin is next to a gene involved in synthesizing one of RNA’s building blocks. This observation led them to examine whether viperin might modify this RNA building block.
Following this discovery, researchers identified viperinlike proteins across all kingdoms of life, from ancient bacteria to modern plants and animals. This meant that viperin is a very ancient protein that evolved early in life, probably well before the advent of multicellular organisms – because even bacteria must fight viral infections.
As more complex life forms evolved, viperin was retained and integrated into the complex immune systems of modern animals. Thus, this most recently discovered arm of your immune system’s defenses against viruses is likely the most ancient.
Ping!....................
Personally, I find injecting chlorine bleach as being an effective anti-viral.
Just give me multiple injections of spike protein producing mRNA wrapped in synthetic lipid nanoparticles like Mother Nature intended.
I like 128 proof Bourbon and a nice cigar for my anti-viral.
Repeat as often as necessary
It must be because you get a dose every time you drink city water.
Protease inhibitor...what drug did the FDA ban that had that again?
See, there are alternatives. I’m not a close minded guy, but I want cures that are scientific and time tested.
Well, the immune system produces that drug - until mRNA from the Prince of Disaster - Pfizer takes care of things.
The interferon-inducible protein viperin controls cancer metabolic reprogramming to enhance cancer progression
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36227691/
here is another interesting article. This virus is one that many people have had and dont even know it
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1202007
old science:
Human Cytomegalovirus Directly Induces the Antiviral Protein Viperin to Enhance Infectivity
“But recent research has uncovered”
How can anyone but Babylon Bee report such stuff. For thousands of years people have repeated that the body builds its own defenses. For thousands of year people have said Mothers milk transmits the defenses of the mother to the baby.
For Hundreds of years the description has been scientific.
For almost a hundred years the scientific explanation has been quite specific and accurate.
For my 80 years it has been preached that certain sinful habits destroy a mom’s defenses so that she cannot pass on her defenses to her baby via her milk.
Nature sure is dumb. Professional affirmative-action grant recipients and their non-reproducible peer-reviewed journal articles are so much smarter.
Viperin—taken down with a pinch of salt
“What to eat when you have a cold has always been the subject of much debate and advice, usually informed by very little science. However, in this issue of EMBO Reports, Yuan et al (2021) uncover an intriguing link between a high salt diet and a susceptibility to viral infection. Mice fed on a short-term high salt diet were found to carry a higher viral load than control mice fed a normal diet. The researchers trace this effect back to a salt-induced decrease in cellular levels of the antiviral protein, viperin. More generally, these studies provide further insights into the regulation of proteins involved in the cellular antiviral response.”
https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embr.202154258
here is something to consider for those that have cancer. you would need to research further this idea that viperin enhances cancer....and salt does a number on viperin.
” But recent research has uncovered an unexpected facet to your immune system: It can synthesize its own antiviral molecules in response to viral infections. “
I have always insti9nctively believed that.
I have always believed/understood the very nature of the immune system is not for dealing with the known or previously known biological attacks - the “day to day work of the immune system - but to find ways to attack brand new previously not experienced attackers. That last part is how the immune system got to where it now attacks things that it sees as “known” attackers to begin with.
It has to be. A newborn has some working and functioning immunity it got from its mother, but it does not last but a few weeks or few months at most,before the natural immune system has to start devising defenses on its own; and it does; whether it does that as well in everyone or not.
Functionally, viperin increased lipogenesis and glycolysis in cancer cells by inhibiting fatty acid β-oxidation. Viperin expression also enhanced cancer stem cell properties, ultimately promoting tumor initiation in murine models.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9753986/
But that same thing turns on you and enhances cancer. Then it seems to me that you want to knock down Viperin somehow.
Cancer really must have been developed by the Devil if you believe in such a thing because it is one tricky S.O.B.
Is it your point that while viperin fights viruses — it also promotes the growth of cancer cells?
That doesn’t sound like a very good tradeoff unless you can get the the viperin to show up to kill the virus and then quickly disappear before you get a cancer bloom.
Virus’s are pretty tricky too.
(From the article):" Viruses have no independent life cycle
– they are completely dependent on the cells they infect to supply all the chemical building blocks needed to replicate themselves.(Emphasis mine)
Once inside a cell, the virus hijacks its machinery and turns it into a factory to make hundreds of new viruses.
Antiviral drugs are molecules that inactivate proteins essential to the functioning of the virus by exploiting the fundamental differences in the way that cells and viruses replicate.
"One key difference between cells and most viruses is how they store their genetic information.
All cells use DNA to store their genetic information.
DNA is a long, chainlike molecule built from four different chemical building blocks, each representing a different “letter” of the genetic code.
These building blocks are connected by chemical bonds in a head-to-tail fashion to produce strings of millions of letters.
The order of these letters spells out the genetic blueprint for building a new cell."
"Many viruses, however, store their genetic information using RNA.
RNA is built from a chain of four chemical letters, just like DNA, but the letters have slightly different molecular structures.
RNA is single-stranded, while DNA is double-stranded.
Viral genomes are also much smaller than cellular genomes, typically only a few thousand letters long."
"Researchers were clued in to viperin’s function when they noticed that the gene coding for viperin is next to a gene involved in synthesizing one of RNA’s building blocks.
This observation led them to examine whether viperin might modify this RNA building block."
"Following this discovery, researchers identified viperinlike proteins across all kingdoms of life, from ancient bacteria to modern plants and animals.
This meant that viperin is a very ancient protein that evolved early in life, probably well before the advent of multicellular organisms
– because even bacteria must fight viral infections."
HT/Red Badger for the narration and graphic display
A REALLY Great Find !
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