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fibre capsid gp12- host proteins gp12-gp41 GP RNA calicivirus matrix capsid matrix DNA S S S S N M E M M M N capsid N GP gp12-gp41 matrix gp12-gp41 GP N adenovirus ribosome immature HIV mature HIV

envelope proteins GnGc Gc Gn E Gn Gc Lassa E capsid tegument N RNA capsid L capsid capsid SL M capsid S S S S core ssDNA RNA ssRNA Pol dsDNA DNA

capsid capsid Heartland virus E E RNA HA NA HA ssDNA HA HA capsid HA HA capsid capsid E M1 M2 NP apolipoprotein anellovirus RNA virus membrane Pol

virus Bluetongue virus fibres capsid DNA virus Sputnik capsid CORONAVIRUS membrane membrane

mRNA RNA

core

DNA encoding coronavirus adenovirus

S S neutralised coronavirus

Freely available under a Creative Commons License 100 nm = 1/10,000th of a mm CC BY 4.0 (2020) Ed Hutchinson, MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research

Viruses and snowflakes

A traditional Christmas activity, here in Glasgow and in many other parts of the world, is making paper snowflakes. Fold up a circle of paper, cut a design into it, unfold it again and you end up with a symmetrical design that looks like a snowflake. If, like my colleagues at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, you spend a lot of thinking about the microscopic world, these symmetrical decorations can also remind you of something else – .

Snowflake (Alexey Kljatov, 2015) Virus and symmetry

Why would viruses look like snowflakes? After all, we don’t expect to look like snowmen or fungi to look like icicles (although some do; is quite varied).

It becomes clear if we think about what a virus is. A virus is a set of genetic instructions that take over a and turn it into a factory for making more viruses. Importantly, one of the things the viral make the cell do is to produce microscopic particles that can package up new copies of viral genes, in to transport them to new host cells. These infectious virus particles (or An icosahedron (Tilman Piesk, 2015), and an ‘virions’) are very distinctive, and are usually the icosahedral calcivirus , shown in 3D first thing we think of when we think ‘virus.’ They and in cross-section (Conley et al. (2019) are, if you can leave the associations with disease Nature 565 (7739) 377-381). aside, quite beautiful.

One of the things that makes virus particles like the water that forms snowflakes, they will beautiful is that they are often symmetrical. assemble into if they are kept under the Indeed, some virus particles are so regular that, right conditions in a laboratory – this trick has Virus Snowflakes

In this collection you’ll find viruses that we care about because they make people sick, and viruses that we care about because they make sick. You will find viruses that don’t do either of these things but are just really cool – the enormous Mimivirus and the tiny virus that infects it (a virus infecting a virus!); the unobtrusive anellovirus, which you are likely to be infected with right now without noticing it or having any ill-effects.

You will not find some viruses, either because they are not symmetrical enough (the tailed , or bacteria-infecting viruses, that Artistic representation of SARS-CoV-2, which resemble lunar landing modules are among the is wrapped in an envelope of membrane most beautiful viruses but they only have one copy (David S. Goodsell, RCSB Data Bank; of their long tail) or because they have the wrong doi: 10.2210/rcsb_pdb/goodsell-gallery-024). sort of symmetry (this includes viruses that stack their capsid proteins into a helix, like the filament- been used by crystallographers to study their shaped virus, and certain viruses that have invisible small structures in great detail. distinctive shapes like the bullet-shaped virus, the brick-shaped virus or the lemon-shaped viruses that infect some single- Why are virus particles so regular? celled ). Virus particles are symmetrical because, despite Finally, this collection was put together in a year the huge impact they have on our world, viruses dominated by one particular virus, severe acute are very simple. Compared to us, viruses have very respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) few genes, and so they need to make virus the cause of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) particles from an extremely small set of and the resulting . Happily, by components, which they use repeatedly. understanding the structure of virus particles we One way to do this is to assemble a regular box of now have some tools to fight it, and this collection ‘capsid’ proteins to enclose the viral genes (an ends with two SARS-CoV-2 vaccines inspired by icosahedron, which has twenty sides). A 2D virus structures, as as a final snowflake projection of an icosahedron is roughly hexagonal, showing how can protect us against giving it the same symmetry as a snowflake. SARS-CoV-2 – perhaps the best Christmas gift any of us could have this year. Another way to make virus particles is for the virus to steal components from our own cells. Many Other Resources virus particles are wrapped in a layer of membrane obtained from the cell they grew in – a good way * More free resources for learning about viruses, of protecting the viral genes, though it can be including a colouring book, 3D paper art models disrupted by detergents in soap, or alcohol in hand (including of helical viruses) and an augmented gels. Surface tension tends to pull membranes into reality app, can be found with the files for these spheres, and proteins that float in them or within snowflakes at the website of the MRC-University them tend to spread out to a roughly even spacing. of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (https://tinyurl.com/yc8edw7a). Because of this, it turns out that many viruses can * These virus snowflakes were based on a wide be made into paper snowflakes. (A little bit of variety of research papers but I was also grateful, tweaking was needed to make them fit the as many virologists are, for the excellent virus symmetry of Christmas decorations exactly, and if summaries at ViralZone you are already interested in viruses you can try (https://viralzone.expasy.org). Any errors are and predict where that was needed.) mine, though some of them, due to the unforgiving symmetry relationships of Christmas decorations, were deliberate.

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