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amelius

Can a drug target that sequence specifically?

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That sequence is present everywhere in your body and living beings, so no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyadenylation

Not if it's common to both viruses and human cells you can't.

IIRC Adenin binds to Thymin, and there are some viruses and bacteria that have alternative bases, and scientusts have discovered 82 other possible ones.

If the virus could be bound with an artificial RNA strand that had a stronger bond than natural RNA, it could be denatured, and pooped out.

https://devries.chem.ucsb.edu/research/past/base-pairing

Poly-A binding proteins naturally exist. They are used to regulate translation and to sequester mRNA during heat shock stress, IIRC. This prevents mistranslation, again IIRC.

https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fasebj.31....

Is it that simple? From a lay perspective (and granted I’m a little foggy because I actually have covid right now), I’d expect the answer is yes but with huge unintended consequences.

Ok yes, theoretically you can make something targeting the polyA tail. But everything else you body make will also get targeted because this is basically a marker of all RNA for translation.

Now making a drug that targets only viruses and not your body RNA? Possible but it is so hard not much progress has been made.

Is regex a drug feature we are building towards?

You can't parse DNA with regex.

Not with that attitude.

If stackoverflow taught me anything, you will only summon Zalgo by trying.

They used to say that about email addresses. But hold my beer and I'll be back in like a month with some buggy half-assed crap that kinda does the job and only occasionally crashes the system!

In my experience genetics is a bit more complicated than an email address

Yes, that is an understatement

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