On Jan. 12, 2021, UC Berkeley HIV researchers announced that they had determined the atomic structure of a coronavirus protein thought to help the pathogen evade and dampen response from human immune cells.

The structural map ﾖ published in the journal PNAS, but has been open-access for the scientific community since August 2020 ﾖ laid the groundwork for new antiviral treatments tailored specifically to SARS-CoV-2, and enabled further investigations into how the newly emerged virus ravages the human body.