Antiviral Chemotherapy

Aside for their importance in treating viral diseases, Antiviral drugs make excellent laboratory tools. These can block the functions of specific viral proteins and thus specific stages in viral infection. Antiviral drugs, in conjunction with viral mutations that confer drug resistance, can help to identify the roles of viral proteins and dissect the details of how these proteins do their jobs. Drug resistance mutations can provide selectable markers for engineering interesting mutant viruses and performing a great role in viral genetics.