Winter has returned, so is the flu season accompanied by flu, fever, aching limbs and runny nose,that has forced scientists to study how the virus interacts with human body.
Scientists explained that mostly all mentioned symptoms are triggered by influenza viruses, which enter our body through tiny droplets and then infect vulnerable cells.
To study a more detailed process, a team of researchers from Switzerland and Japan has taken an exceptionally close look at how the virus behaves.
According to Science Daily, a study published in the journal Enhanced visualization of influenza A virus entry into living cells using virus-view atomic force microscopy, has helped scientists to monitor the process by using advanced techniques.
With the help of specialized microscopes, the scientists zoomed in on the outer surface of human cells in a Petri dish to watch their activity live and examine sharp details about how the influenza virus penetrates into a living cell.
The group of researchers, along with professor of molecular medicine Yohei Yamauchi at ETH Zurich, unexpectedly discovered that the human cells don’t let the virus penetrate easily and make multiple efforts to seize the virus or try their level best to resist it entering the body.
The membrane at that point also pushes upward, almost as if trying to seize the virus, and these wave-like motions intensify if the virus tries to drift away from the surface.
The researchers of the study demonstrated that cells assist the virus at several stages of entry.
Although cells gain nothing from being infected, still the action looks active as the virus disturbs a routine cellular uptake system that the cells cannot do without.
“The infection of our body cells is like a dance between virus and cell,” says Yamauchi.
While digging deeper into the details, scientists observed that the influenza virus attaches to specific molecules on the cell surface to begin infecting the body.
The process resembles surfing on the membrane, and the virus moves along the surface, latching onto one molecule after another until it arrives at the most suitable receptors rich in protein.
When the cell’s receptors detect that the virus has attached, the membrane begins forming a small indentation at that spot.
A structural protein named, ‘Clathrin’ shapes and supports this deepening pocket. As the pocket expands, it wraps around the virus and forms a vesicle, while the cell then pulls this vesicle inward, where the coat dissolves and releases the virus.
The researchers performed the experiment with the help of a process called virus-view dual confocal and atomic force microscopy AFM, which merges AFM with fluorescence microscopy.
They informed that this combined approach makes it possible to track the fine-scale movements involved as the virus enters the cell.
