Medical Express In a new study published in Nature, University of Minnesota researchers have found that the Marburg virus, one of the world’s deadliest pathogens with an average 73% fatality rate, is unusually efficient at getting inside human cells. They also showed that the virus’s entry protein contains structural features that explain this efficiency and point to a strategy for blocking infection. The researchers designed a tightly controlled system that enables a fair comparison of the entry proteins of Marburg and its relative Ebola. Using this approach, they showed that Marburg’s entry protein can drive viral entry into human cells up to 300 times more efficiently than Ebola’s.
The team further found that although the two viruses share the same human receptor, Marburg’s entry protein binds this receptor in a distinct orientation and with higher affinity, then changes shape in ways that help the virus enter cells.