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Infectious Disease ping - "Your immune system makes its own antiviral drug − and it’s likely one of the most ancient"
Understanding the natural immune system and the mechanics how it functions, replicates, and defends the body
Fortunately, graphics are included ..(whew !)

(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 !