Researchers produce soluble hantavirus spike proteins for structural analysis
Scientists engineered Drosophila cells to express soluble spike proteins of Andes virus (ANDV) by inserting synthetic genes for the viral Gn and Gc proteins into specialized plasmids. They designed a hetero-octamerization domain to stabilize the proteins and introduced mutations to prevent aggregation, enabling purification for structural studies. Stable cell lines were cultivated to produce sufficient quantities of these proteins for further research.