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Can science conquer the flu virus?
There's an enzyme that the flu virus uses to copy itself and create mutations. Understanding this is crucial in our attempts to treat and prevent flu.
Aartjan te Velthuis is a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow at the Sir William Dunn School and a lecturer in Biomedical Sciences at Lincoln College Oxford.
He studies the replication of RNA viruses, focussing in particular on the enzyme that copies and transcribes the genetic material of the virus: the RNA polymerase.
He currently studies the RNA polymerase of the influenza A virus using biochemical and single-molecule techniques. He previously worked on the RNA polymerase of the SARS-coronavirus.