A team of researchers from the CNRS and l’Université Grenoble Alpes describes for the first time the structure of the protective coat that surrounds the influenza virus, according to a study published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.
One way researchers are exploring to fight the influenza virus is through drugs that can destroy its genome, which is made up of eight RNA molecules. However, this is not easy: each RNA molecule is bound to a protective shell of proteins, making it very difficult to manipulate.
For the first time, a team of researchers from the CNRS and l’Université Grenoble Alpes has described the structure of this protective structure at an atomic level. The scientific community has awaited this analysis for four decades. The authors have also identified the precise positioning of the RNA molecules in their protective coat and the interactions between the two helix strands.
The team used biochemical approaches and state-of-the-art cryo-electron microscopy provided by the Integrated Structural Biology, Grenoble (CEA/CNRS/European Molecular Biology Laboratory/Université Grenoble Alpes) for this work.
This is a massive breakthrough in our understanding of the influenza virus. Crucially, this work paves the way for the design of potential new drug molecules capable of binding and destroying the protein coat, weakening viral RNA, and inhibiting the replication of the influenza virus. This virus affects between 2 and 6 million people in France every winter and causes around 10,000 deaths in susceptible individuals.
Florian Chenavier, Eleftherios Zarkadas, Lily-Lorette Freslon, Alice J Stelfox, Guy Schoehn, Rob W H Ruigrok, Allison Ballandras-Colas, Thibaut Crépin, Influenza a virus antiparallel helical nucleocapsid-like pseudo-atomic structure, Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 53, Issue 3, 10 February 2025, gkae1211, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkae1211