“Lethal mutagenesis” is the term that is being used to describe technique under development by scientists at Rice University. The idea is that viruses could be forced to mutate at an unsustainable rate, thereby effectively destroying the virus.

In the words of Rice bio-engineer Michael Deem:

If the mutation, recombination or horizontal gene transfer rates are too high, the system delocalizes and gets spread all over sequence space

The idea was first conceived five years ago, and should it prove practical, would provide a good last line of defense against human viruses. [Rice University via Inventorspot] Image: [IFPMA.org]

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