Congratulations to JCSMR researchers Dr Jen Clancy and Prof Thomas Preiss, who coauthored a paper that was featured on the cover of the journal Nature Chemical Biology. They collaborated with researchers at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, and elsewhere, to better understand how gammaherpesviruses can avoid immune recognition and persist in a latent infection. In doing so they were able to show that unusual structural RNA elements, called G-quadruplexes, can reduce translation of messenger RNA into viral protein. Targeting G-quadruplexes in viral RNA might represent a novel therapeutic approach to reduce the burden of gammaherpesvirus-associated malignancies.