APS helps answer key questions about common cold virus

In a world where doctors can treat the most devastating illnesses, the common cold remains elusive.

That's because up until recently, scientists knew little about the viruses that spread this seasonal nuisance.

Bob Fischetti, senior scientist in Argonne's Biosciences Dvision, stands alongside Glen Nemerow, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbial Science at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and Vijay Reddy, an associate professor in Scripp's Department of Molecular Biology. The Scripps researchers used the APS to answer key questions about a cold virus.

Learn more about the APS upgrade for energy, materials and life sciences work. 

But that may be changing now that researchers have mapped one virus's atomic structure using the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory.

Glen Nemerow and Vijay Reddy have been studying the human adenovirus - responsible for 10 percent of colds in addition to other, more harmful infections - for more than a dozen years.

Nemerow, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbial Science at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and Reddy, an associate professor in Scripp's Department of Molecular Biology, paired up in the late 1990s.