To figure out what exactly was causing this antiviral capability, the scientists then incubated the vesicles with the viruses and imaged them under a microscope. They found that the viruses got stuck to receptors on the vesicles’ surface—trapping them and rendering them incapable of infecting cells. In other words, the vesicles were acting as a kind of decoy. “Because the same receptors are on the vesicles as are on the cells, most of the viruses get bound to the vesicle and killed before they ever get to the cells,” Bleier says.
In addition, the scientists also found that the stimulated vesicles contained higher quantities of microRNA—small strands of RNA—previously known
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