Filenews 19 January 2021
This is not a three-dimensional model, but the first direct representation of the SARS-CoV-2 in three dimensions.
The spectacular image was presented by the Austrian company Nanographics, which processed data collected using the cryoelectronic microscopy technique.
Token limit
The virus that took on pandemic dimensions and upset humanity is impossible to make visible with an optical microscope, since its size – about 100 nanometers or billionths of a meter – is smaller than the wavelength of visible light.
The solution for these sizes is offered by electronic microscopy, which measures how the sample in question deflects the electrons with which it is bombarded. The technology of electronic microscopes has continued to improve for decades and is now approaching the level of atomic analysis.
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Nanographics, a company founded by researchers at the Technical University of Vienna, used data provided by Sai Li's team at Beijing's Xinhua University.
Freezing
The Chinese researchers used the cryoelectronic microscopy technique, in which the sample is frozen before being examined.
The Austrian company then undertook to process the data and remove the noise caused by the saline solution in which thousands of copies of the virus had been packaged.
The quality of the result is so high that one can even distinguish the protein-pins that protrude from the surface of the virus and allow its entry into human cells.
The methods that allowed the image to be created could prove useful in rapidly analyzing microscopy data, said Ivan Viola of the Technical University of Vienna.
His team is now working with the American Scrippes Institute and the Saudi University of Science and Technology to develop software to create structural models of proteins and other biomolecules.
Source: in.gr
