In a message dated 1/15/00 22:31:22, Doug Jones wrote:
>"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" cited:
>> > The drug fits neatly into a groove on the
>> > surface of the virus, gumming up the machinery it needs to infect the
>> > body's cells.
>
>But isn't the coat protein of the common cold very mutable?
>Pleconaril-resistant strains will arise very quickly, and back to square
>one...
The highly mutable outer coats proteins shield less-mutable receptors
from immune surveilance. The receptor would be much harder to
mutate and still preserve function. I assume that's the target.
There may also be conserved regions in the coat proteins as well.
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