The Viral Equivalent of the Enigma Code

(52:23)  Guest: Peter Stockley, Professor of Biological Chemistry in the University of Leeds’ Faculty of Biology Sciences  During World War ll, a team of scientists, including the father of the Modern Day computer, Alan Turing, managed to crack the “Enigma Code” used by the Nazis to scramble their secret communications. Maybe you’ve seen the movie about their efforts called The Imitation Game. Well, it turns out that viruses may have an Enigma Code, too: a genetic message embedded in the virus that tells it how to replicate and wreak havoc on the immune system.  “You can think of virus particles as a transport vehicle as the nucleic acid gets wrapped in the protein cell,” says Stockley.  “There is a hidden code that people don’t really suspect. It’s a set of instruction,” says Stockley “how to build that protection cell around the nucleic acid.”