How are virus structures determined?
Cryo-electron microscopy is one way to determine the structure of a virus. After isolating and concentrating virus particles, one can quickly freeze them on a microscope grid. The freezing allows the particles to be preserved “intact.” Images of the particles on the grid are then obtained with an electron microscope. By reconstructing thousands of images, one can obtain a final three-dimensional structure with enough detail to observe the entire virus particle as well as the individual structural proteins that comprise the particle. Another method of obtaining virus structure is X-ray crystallography. For this method, virus (or the viral protein of interest) is isolated, purified, concentrated, and crystallized. High-powered X-rays are beamed onto the crystal, and the diffraction pattern is analyzed computationally and ultimately reveals a structure of the molecule of interest.
