Tero Ahola

TL;DR: All plus-strand RNA viruses replicate in association with cytoplasmic membranes of infected cells, and studies of individual nonstructural proteins have revealed that the replication complexes are associated with the membranes and targeted to the respective organelle by the ns proteins rather than RNA.

TL;DR: Mutational analysis in a replicon system showed that the N7-MTase activity was important for SARS virus replication/transcription and can thus be used as an attractive drug target to develop antivirals for control of coronaviruses including the deadly Sars virus.

TL;DR: It is suggested that in the capping of alphavirus mRNAs the guanine is methylated before linkage to the mRNA molecule.

TL;DR: The structure of the nsp16/nsp10 interaction interface shows that nsp10 may stabilize the SAM-binding pocket and extend the substrate RNA-binding groove of nsp15, consistent with the findings in biochemical assays, and suggest that nSp16/Nsp10 interface may represent a better drug target than the viral MTase active site for developing highly specific anti-coronavirus drugs.

TL;DR: The presented approach for discoveringAlphaviral inhibitors enabled us to identify potential lead structures for the development of alphavirus entry and replication phase inhibitors as well as demonstrated the usefulness of CHIKV replicon and SFV as biosafe surrogate models for anti-CHIKV screening.