achoo!

Researchers who mapped the DNA of more than 100 different cold viruses said recently they have discovered a shortcut in their life cycle, which may explain why they can inflict misery so quickly. They also believe they may be able to design drugs to fight the rhinoviruses, which use their single gene to move rapidly from person to person, causing symptoms that range from irritating sniffles to pneumonia.

Instead of designing one drug to cure the common cold, several may be needed because the virus mutates so efficiently. The hope had been that it might be easy to fight the viruses, which sicken children on average 10 times a year and adults at least twice a year on average.

This is because any rhinovirus has just one gene, which in turn makes a giant protein that appears to do little or nothing until it gets chopped up into 11 smaller pieces by an enzyme called a protease. Researchers tried to attack this big, clumsy protein before it gets chopped up.

The first drug, the virus mutated around it. But now the researchers said now they have all the pieces, they will begin to understand what areas are not so flexible then will begin to do some more rational drug design. For example, it might be possible to attack the protease – an approach that has worked in fighting AIDS.

If the researchers could inhibit the protease from cleaving that protein, maybe they could render all rhinoviruses ineffective.