Scientists believe they have made a major breakthrough in the search for treatments for common viruses, including those behind the common cold and HIV.
The Leeds researchers say they have found a hidden "code" in the RNA of these single-stranded viruses.
They say it is possible to "jam" the code – and prevent the virus assembling itself.
The discovery is equivalent to the war-time discovery of the German coding Enigma machine, they claim.
They say they have found the coding system that hides key signals given by the virus to enable its deployment.
Single-stranded viruses include HIV, polio, hepatitis C, norovirus and rhinovirus, which causes the common cold.
The discovery has been reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researcher Professor Peter Stockley, of Leeds University, said: "For this whole class of viruses, we have found the ‘Enigma machine’- the coding system that was hiding these signals from us.
"We have shown that not only can we read these messages but we can jam them and stop the virus’ deployment."
Fellow researcher Dr Roman Tuma explained: : "We have understood for decades that the RNA carries the genetic messages that create viral proteins, but we didn’t know that, hidden within the stream of letters we use to denote the genetic information, is a second code governing virus assembly. It is like finding a secret message within an ordinary news report and then being able to crack the whole coding system behind it.
"This paper goes further: it also demonstrates that we could design molecules to interfere with the code, making it uninterpretable and effectively stopping the virus in its tracks."
N. Patel et al. Revealing the density of encoded functions in a viral RNA PNAS 2 February 2015; doi:10.1073/ pnas.1420812112 [abstract]
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