On the science front, as a complete layperson, sometimes I've recieved wonderful explanations as corrective responses to my throwing out a terrible ELI5. So here's my bait attempt: It seems that...
On the science front, as a complete layperson, sometimes I've recieved wonderful explanations as corrective responses to my throwing out a terrible ELI5. So here's my bait attempt:
It seems that HIV carries around its viral source code (RNA), plus other stuff ("nucleocapsids, reverse transcriptase, and integrase" - maybe a compiler?), inside a sort of crochet egg called a capsid.
The crochet egg has to both protect the payload until ready to deploy, and also to easily unravel when it's ready to deploy. So this class of medicine, capsid inhibitors, can either try to break the crochet egg and destroy its content safely, or else like this HIV one, super glue all the yarn together so the payload can't even get out.
This particular one is delivered as an injection that slowly releases the super glue molecule that only targets this specific type of viral yarn. Crochet egg can't unravel, viral RNA can't be replicated, human can't be infected.
So, beyond the victory over this one specific virus, we can now use the same strategy to try to beat other viruses and pathogen right? Find out what keeps their stuff together, and molecularly break them up or else prevent them from doing their thing.
On the human side of things,
I'm brought to tears.
"For those of us who can remember the situation with HIV back in the 1980s and 90s, the current state of affairs (living a full life with the disease held in stasis) has been an object of wonder for some time, and this makes it even more so."
I remember reading cartoon handouts as a kid, and the usual nonsensical teasing ("you've got AIDS!" "no u!"), as well as the teacher's personal hot take that it's nothing any of us good clean living people have to worry about ... I remember some of those inhuman rhetoric loudly spoken at the pulpit.... And the even more inhuman rhetoric whispered around gossip tables.
This is the realm of magic isn't it, or as close to it as we humans can come: hard work, persistence, cooperation and sharing of unfruitful research, and making use of all other new magic we're constantly acquiring, all to change the outcome of things we previously didn't understand or control.
On the science front, as a complete layperson, sometimes I've recieved wonderful explanations as corrective responses to my throwing out a terrible ELI5. So here's my bait attempt:
It seems that HIV carries around its viral source code (RNA), plus other stuff ("nucleocapsids, reverse transcriptase, and integrase" - maybe a compiler?), inside a sort of crochet egg called a capsid.
Crystallography diagram from Wikipedia
The crochet egg has to both protect the payload until ready to deploy, and also to easily unravel when it's ready to deploy. So this class of medicine, capsid inhibitors, can either try to break the crochet egg and destroy its content safely, or else like this HIV one, super glue all the yarn together so the payload can't even get out.
This particular one is delivered as an injection that slowly releases the super glue molecule that only targets this specific type of viral yarn. Crochet egg can't unravel, viral RNA can't be replicated, human can't be infected.
So, beyond the victory over this one specific virus, we can now use the same strategy to try to beat other viruses and pathogen right? Find out what keeps their stuff together, and molecularly break them up or else prevent them from doing their thing.
On the human side of things,
I'm brought to tears."For those of us who can remember the situation with HIV back in the 1980s and 90s, the current state of affairs (living a full life with the disease held in stasis) has been an object of wonder for some time, and this makes it even more so."
I remember reading cartoon handouts as a kid, and the usual nonsensical teasing ("you've got AIDS!" "no u!"), as well as the teacher's personal hot take that it's nothing any of us good clean living people have to worry about ... I remember some of those inhuman rhetoric loudly spoken at the pulpit.... And the even more inhuman rhetoric whispered around gossip tables.
This is the realm of magic isn't it, or as close to it as we humans can come: hard work, persistence, cooperation and sharing of unfruitful research, and making use of all other new magic we're constantly acquiring, all to change the outcome of things we previously didn't understand or control.