Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have uncovered a crucial step that enteroviruses use to reproduce inside human cells. The findings, published in Nature Communications , explain how viruses responsible for illnesses such as polio, encephalitis, myocarditis, and even the common cold take control of cellular machinery to copy themselves. Scientists say the discovery could eventually help researchers create a new generation of antiviral drugs capable of targeting many enteroviruses at once. The study was led by Deepak Koirala, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UMBC, along with recent Ph.D. graduate Naba Krishna Das. Their work helps answer longstanding questions about how these viruses launch replication once they invade a cell. "My lab has been really motivated to understand how RNA viruses produce their proteins inside the cell and multiply their genome to make more virus particles," Koirala says.…