All viruses are protected by a durable protein shell regulating many crucial functions, such as host-cell infiltration and replication. Some disinfectants operate to disrupt or destroy this shell, rendering the virus inactive. However, many widely used antiviral solutions are also harmful to the environment and over prolonged usage, can be toxic to people or other desired organisms. Especially within enclosed environments, safer alternatives are necessary. This manuscript investigates the mechanisms behind CAGE, an ionic liquid that was previously identified to demonstrate antimicrobial properties and its interactions with a viral capsid protein. To do this, molecular dynamics simulations were used to simulate interactions between all the atoms involved in this process. Molecular dynamics simulations are a type of atomic-scale simulation based on computationally solving Newton’s laws of motion. The results showed that, on average, CAGE promotes certain forms of protein structure in regions of the viral protein vital for function, suggesting a mechanism for possible antimicrobial effects.

Adolescence is a critical period of development involving changes in various regions of the brain often resulting in the presentation of many mental disorders. Anhedonia, or the loss of pleasure in response to rewards, is a major symptom of depression. Because of the potential relationship between reward processing and depression, it is possible that developmental changes in the reward system may relate to the severity of depressive symptoms across adolescence. While we did not identify a significant relationship between the reward system and depressive symptom development across adolescence, our analyses revealed that increases in average depressive severity was associated with the maturation of one of the brain’s key reward structures. This finding suggests that interactions between reward function and depression are more complicated than initially expected and factors like early life stress may impact both the reward system and depression development.