Motor-nerve cells in the spinal cord, which carry signals from the brain to muscles and glands, don’t regenerate once injured—with long-term consequences for accident victims. If scientists could somehow infiltrate and reawaken these neurons, spine damage might be reversed.
Nature, as it turns out, may provide the perfect agent for such a mission—the poliovirus. The debilitating effects of poliomyelitis arise because the virus adroitly finds and invades motor neurons, which it then destroys.
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