Health
Llamas—Yes, Llamas—Could Help Us Fight Covid-19 – WIRED
These creatures have evolved special “nanobodies” that may have an edge over human antibodies when it comes to developing a new treatment.
Millions of years ago, some unknown common ancestor of todays llamas, camels, and alpacas underwent an unusual genetic mutation. This evolutionary happenstance gave llamas and their kin a strange type of antibody that no other mammals havewhich, surprisingly, could end up aiding in the fight against Covid-19. On Monday, in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, researchers from the Rosalind Franklin Institute and the University of Oxford reported the discovery of two llama antibo…
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