Fake virus could make safe new vaccines

A "wimpy" artificial virus protected mice against polio, and the approach might be used to make a range of safer new vaccines against viruses, U.S. researchers reported on Friday. The team at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, had created the first artificial virus, a synthetic version of polio, in 2002. Reporting in the journal Science, they said they used it to vaccinate mice, and then infected the mice with what should have been a deadly dose of polio. The mice survived.
"Ultimately we created a wimpy poliovirus that can be customized and does not cause disease unless given at high doses," Bruce Futcher, a professor of molecular genetics and microbiology who worked on the study. "These viruses are still far from suitable vaccines for humans, but there is a lot of potential for this approach," he added in a statement.
The researchers used a unique method to make their virus, relying on a built-in redundancy in DNA, the material that carries genetic instructions in organisms. DNA's code is written using just four nucleic acids, represented by the letters A, C, T and G. These are combined in various ways to make amino acids, which in turn make proteins.
It is possible to make an amino acid with more than one combination of these letters -- for example, GCC and GCG both code for the amino acid alanine. For unknown reasons, organisms favor certain combinations.

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