As mammals evolve, so do mammalian viruses. In doing so, they develop creative and effective ways to counter and evade the antiviral responses of their mammal hosts’ immune systems. Researching those mechanisms at the molecular level can reveal key insights into the principles of such strategies relevant to therapy development. An international team of scientists, led by prof. Savvas Savvides of the VIB Inflammation Research Center at Ghent University, set out to do just that. By zooming in on GIF — a protein secreted by the virus that causes Orf, or ‘thistle disease’ — they unraveled viral molecular strategies to counter the mammalian immune system. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, provide the basis for developing antiviral therapies and for exploiting the potency of viral proteins to tweak the human immune system to counter inflammatory diseases and cancer.