Sea Anemones Fight Viruses in a Way That Breaks Every Rule…

Sea Anemones Fight Viruses in a Way That Breaks Every Rule We Thought We Knew Sometimes the most useful insights into human biology come from the most unexpected creatures. This time, it's a sea anemone. A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, led by researchers at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has uncovered an antiviral defence system so different from our own that it's challenging long-held assumptions about how animal immunity evolved. In humans, one of our key antiviral defences relies on a protein called MAVS. When MAVS detects a virus, it triggers the immune system into action, essentially sounding the alarm. Sea anemones split from the evolutionary line leading to humans over 600 million years ago, making them a valuable window into the earliest evolution of animal immunity. Researchers identified a protein in sea anemone