Seeing how the Hepatitis C virus builds ion channels could help researchers find new drugs to fight the disease

(Phys.org) —Viruses are masters of minimalist design. With only a simple genome and a handful of proteins, a virus can hijack much more sophisticated cells and mimic many of the intra- and inter-cellular machinery built by their much more complex hosts. Using these same building blocks, many viruses—like Hepatitis C—can also make us dangerously ill.