• 38402160995364419201080317551922519105620PublicAssets/3771
    Molecular model of freshly made Rous sarcoma virus (RSV)
    Active
    View Entry

    Large-Resolution Image
    3840 x 2160 pixels
    13 × 7 inches (300 dpi)
    9.49Mb

    Medium-Resolution Image
    1920 x 1080 pixels
    13 × 7 inches (150 dpi)
    310.1kb

    Low-Resolution Image
    922 x 519 pixels
    13 × 7 inches (72 dpi)
    103.1kb

    Molecular model of freshly made Rous sarcoma virus (RSV)

    3771

    Viruses have been the foes of animals and other organisms for time immemorial. For almost as long, they've stayed well hidden from view because they are so tiny (they aren't even cells, so scientists call the individual virus a "particle"). This image shows a molecular model of a particle of the Rous sarcoma virus (RSV), a virus that infects and sometimes causes cancer in chickens. In the background is a photo of red blood cells. The particle shown is "immature" (not yet capable of infecting new cells) because it has just budded from an infected chicken cell and entered the bird's bloodstream. The outer shell of the immature virus is made up of a regular assembly of large proteins (shown in red) that are linked together with short protein molecules called peptides (green).  This outer shell covers and protects the proteins (blue) that form the inner shell of the particle. But as you can see, the protective armor of the immature virus contains gaping holes. As the particle matures, the short peptides are removed and the large proteins rearrange, fusing together into a solid sphere capable of infecting new cells. While still immature, the particle is vulnerable to drugs that block its development. Knowing the structure of the immature particle may help scientists develop better medications against RSV and similar viruses in humans. Scientists used sophisticated computational tools to reconstruct the RSV atomic structure by crunching various data on the RSV proteins to simulate the entire structure of immature RSV. For more on RSV and how researchers revealed its delicate structure, see the NIH director's blog post Snapshots of Life: Imperfect but Beautiful Intruder.
    Public Note
    Internal NoteResearchers gave permission for public use: Goh, Boon Chong [bgoh3@illinois.edu] To: Spiering, Martin (NIH/NIGMS) [C] Cc: Schulten, Klaus J[schulten@illinois.edu]; Machalek, Alisa Zapp (NIH/NIGMS) [E]; Boon Chong Goh [bcgoh@ks.uiuc.edu]? Thursday, April 14, 2016 5:17 PM Dear Martin, Thanks for your e-mail. Yes, we would love to share the image to the public via your NIGMS website. I attached a high resolution JPEG figure in this e-mail. A high resolution TIFF figure (24 MB) can be downloaded via the following Dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dqd9raxncaqvzb7/Imperfect%20intruder%20for%20NIH.tif?dl=0 Please let me know if you need more information or have any further question. Best wishes, Boon -- Boon Chong Goh Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group 3115 Beckman Institute 405 N. Mathews Avenue Urbana, IL 61801 www.ks.uiuc.edu/~bcgoh
    Keywords
    SourceBoon Chong Goh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    Date2016-04-15 00:00:00
    Credit LineBoon Chong Goh, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
    InvestigatorKlaus Schulten, Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group
    Record TypeIllustration
    Topic Area(s);#Cells;#Molecular Structures;#Tools and Techniques;#
    Previous Uses
    StatusActive

    View All Properties
    Edit Properties

Add New Version

Note: Uploading a version which already exists will overwrite the existing version with the uploaded file.
* Uploaded thumbnails wider than 120 pixels will be reduced.