{"id":35282,"date":"2011-05-15T15:43:33","date_gmt":"2011-05-15T15:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/building-anti-flu-drugs-on-a-computer-not-exactly-rocket-science\/"},"modified":"2011-05-15T15:43:33","modified_gmt":"2011-05-15T15:43:33","slug":"building-anti-flu-drugs-on-a-computer-not-exactly-rocket-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/building-anti-flu-drugs-on-a-computer-not-exactly-rocket-science.php","title":{"rendered":"Building anti-flu drugs on a computer | Not Exactly Rocket Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/d2598_Haemagglutinin.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4525\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/d2598_Haemagglutinin.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"610\" height=\"335\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/a>You have a sculpture, an intricate piece of modern art, covered in bulges and blisters. Your task is to weave a cover for it. The fit must be exact. You have to fill in every dent and wrap around every lump. Here&rsquo;s the catch: you have to make this faultless shroud from a single piece of string that must <em>automatically weave itself <\/em>into the right three-dimensional shape.<\/p><p>This is the challenge that <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/bakerpg\/drupal\/node\/92\">Sarel Fleishman, Timothy Whitehead and Damian Ekiert<\/a> from the University of Washington have just overcome. Their &ldquo;sculpture&rdquo; is a protein called <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hemagglutinin_%28influenza%29\">haemagglutinin<\/a>, or HA, which sits on the surface of flu viruses. Their &ldquo;shroud&rdquo; is another protein designed to perfectly fit onto the contours of HA and neutralise it. They have found a way of fashioning these designer proteins on a computer &ndash; a feat that could make it easier to create the next generation of anti-flu drugs.<\/p><p>Under the microscope, flu viruses look like spherical pincushions. The &ldquo;pins&rdquo; consist of two proteins: haemagglutinin, which allows the virus to stick to a host cell, and <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/notrocketscience\/2008\/06\/21\/round-peg-square-hole-why-our-bird-flu-drugs-are-a-fluke\/\">neuraminidase<\/a>, which allows it to eventually escape. The different versions of these ...<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/cc0cd_pZW6pm3BiFM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/wp-o-matic\/cache\/cc0cd_i53V4JHmvZs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"padding-left:10px; padding-right: 10px;\"><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You have a sculpture, an intricate piece of modern art, covered in bulges and blisters. Your task is to weave a cover for it. The fit must be exact. You have to fill in every dent and wrap around every &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/astronomy\/building-anti-flu-drugs-on-a-computer-not-exactly-rocket-science.php\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"limit_modified_date":"","last_modified_date":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35282"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/futurist-transhuman-news-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}