Researchers have identified the Achilles heel of the coronavirus | COVID-19 | The gallery

Their discovery concerns the spike protein that the coronavirus uses to attach to and infect human cells.

According to what the science journal “Nature” reports online, researchers at the Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle have created more than 3,800 variations of this protein, changing one amino acid at a time.

Tests have shown that some of these variants bind to human cells as efficiently as the spike protein of the coronavirus.

These tests also allowed scientists to identify amino acids that, if changed, interfere with the ability of the spike protein to attach to host cells.

This could lead to the development of molecules that will neutralize the ability of the virus to infect human cells.

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