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Biophysics

The sweetest candy for the virus

For some viruses, the first step in infecting cells is to latch onto sugars on the cell membrane. The chemical basis of this virus-host recognition process has been identified using an NMR spectroscopic technique.

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Figure 1: Viral recognition of an antigen.

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Frank, A., Kessler, H. The sweetest candy for the virus. Nature 452, 822–823 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/452822a

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