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Led by Anjon Audhya, a professor in the Department of Biomolecular Chemistry, the research team sought to better understand how the Coat Protein Complex II, or COPII, functions.

Again they sequenced the viruses they found in the various mosquito tissues, and they identified two new mutants, both with mutations in the same lock-picking coat protein as the original Reunion mutant, results they published last year in Cell Host and Microbe.

This horse-and-cattle virus does not cause human illness, but its presence is enough to activate the immune system, which learns to recognise and react to the Ebola coat protein—and thus, the vaccine’s inventors hope, to clobber Ebola if it should encounter it.

What if he could transfer a gene from a harmless part of the virus, known as the coat protein, to the papaya’s DNA?

“Entire infectious particles of Papaya Ringspot Virus, including the coat protein component, are found in the fruit, leaves and stems of most plants,” the EPA observed.