Help! How can the virus he draws be so beautiful!!!

On Earth, the interconnected roads, the densely packed buildings, the mountains, rivers, flowers, plants, insects, fish, etc. all constitute the macroscopic world that our human eyes currently perceive.

If we magnify the macroscopic world by ten thousand or even one hundred thousand times, what will appear in our eyes will be a completely different "new world". We call the "indigenous people" living in this world viruses.

MERS-CoV

Just like we humans are divided into different races based on skin color, viruses are also divided into different types, which are mainly divided into DNA viruses and RNA viruses.

DNA viruses need to break through layers of defense to finally enter the nucleus of a biological cell, and then secretly combine their own genetic material with the biological DNA and transcribe it.

A simplified version of hepatitis B virus replication: the virus enters the cell; the outer membrane ablates; the viral circular DNA enters the nucleus; CCC-DNA is created; it is transcribed into RNA; the RNA is packaged into a new capsid. New viruses are produced; the virus leaves the cell. Image source: researchfeatures

RNA viruses do not need to enter the cell nucleus; they can achieve their goal as long as they sneak into the cell because they can imitate the messenger RNA in the body to guide the transcription of the proteases and several structural proteins they need.

For example, the new coronavirus (COVID-19) that appeared in 2019 is an RNA virus, which is also the largest of all RNA viruses. Members of this family also include the famous SARS virus, MERS virus, etc., all of which are coronaviruses.

In order to fight these viruses, we first have to understand them, but since our human eyes cannot directly see the true appearance of the virus, we can only use an electron microscope.

So what do these viruses look like under an electron microscope?

Previously, the famous journal "The Lancet" published a high-definition electron microscope photo of the 2019 novel coronavirus. It looks a bit slippery, and there are many cylindrical protrusions on the surface. In fact, this is also the origin of the name of the coronavirus. It looks like small crowns.

Image source: The lancet

However, in addition to these pseudo-color photos taken directly from an electron microscope, some people have also used color painting to draw viruses under an electron microscope, such as the illustration of the coronavirus below.

Image source: RCSB Protein Database

This image shows the coronavirus as it enters the alveoli of the lungs, surrounded by mucus secreted by respiratory cells, antibodies and several small immune system proteins.

The virus is wrapped in a membrane that contains S (spike) protein, M (membrane) protein, E (envelope) protein and N (nucleocapsid) protein.

The S protein is also called spike, which is mainly used to adhere to the surface of the cell membrane and help the virus enter the cell;

The M protein is another layer of camouflage for the virus after it enters the cell, and it can participate in the organization of the internal nucleoprotein;

The E protein is a membrane channel involved in virus budding;

There are many copies of N protein inside the virus, which bind to the genomic RNA of the coronavirus. (The corresponding positions are shown in the figure below)

After reading this, some students may wonder, are the structures of these viruses really correct?

Here we have to mention the author of this painting, David S. Goodsell, who is a computational biologist and scientific illustrator.

Goodsell began drawing the first sketch of the coronavirus on January 27. Since he attached the most importance to the true restoration of scientific facts, he referred to electron microscope photos during his creation and used methods such as X-ray crystallography and biological computer simulation to fully understand the spatial structure between virus molecules and their relationship with each other.

However, there is not much research data on the new coronavirus, so Goodsell refers more to the SARS virus. Coronaviruses actually have many similarities, the most intuitive of which is their appearance, and the difference lies in the proteins on the membrane, because they all have their own unique protein structure.

After the SARS outbreak, biologists identified several of these protein structures and shared them through the RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB), so Goodsell began to draw coronavirus paintings based on these protein structures.

After several days of intensive research, Goodsell completed the line drawing and added color to it. Although the viruses themselves are not colorful, the bright colors can well distinguish their structures.

And considering that the structure of the molecule itself is already very complex, in order to avoid being too "fancy", Goodsell made the painting style as simple as possible: for example, the pink spike protein, the lavender nucleocapsid, and the light yellow mucus background, which can be called the "mandala" of the virus.

In addition to this coronavirus painting, Goodsell has many other illustrations, such as his previous cross-sectional structure of the Ebola virus.

This image depicts the structure of the Ebola virus, which is wrapped in a membrane on the outside (the pink part) with many Ebola glycoproteins scattered on it (the dark green part, which looks like small trees growing on the membrane).

Image source: wellcomecollection

There is a layer of matrix protein (blue part) inside that supports the outer membrane and fixes the central cylindrical nucleocapsid (light green part), which stores the virus's RNA genome.

There are also various drawings of the HIV virus.

For example, the image below shows HIV (the red sphere on the upper left) being attacked by the immune system, with small Y-shaped antibodies bound to its surface.

As well as immature HIV virus and mature HIV virus.

The picture below shows the HIV virus after budding but not fully mature. The Gag structural protein is light pink, other viral proteins (regulatory proteins, auxiliary proteins) are magenta, RNA is yellow, cellular proteins are blue, and tRNA is green.

Immature HIV virus

This image depicts a mature HIV virion, including the Gag structural protein in blue, viral enzymes in magenta, accessory proteins in green, and viral RNA in yellow. Additional host proteins and tRNA are shown in purple.

Mature HIV virus

Goodsell uses color painting to transform the originally monotonous and gray viruses into vivid and beautiful paintings.

These paintings have also received widespread acclaim, and have appeared on the covers of famous journals several times and have also been made into educational picture books.

It was even made into the logo of an academic conference:

Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) website

To be honest, after seeing these beautiful virus paintings, I can't help but think that if they weren't so deadly, they would be really beautiful! (But it seems that Goodsell's paintings are more beautiful)