Abstract
Viruses pose a challenge to our imaginations. They exert a highly visible influence on the world in which we live, but operate at scales we cannot directly perceive and without a clear separation between their own biology and that of their hosts. Communication about viruses is therefore typically grounded in mental images of virus particles. Virus particles, as the infectious stage of the viral replication cycle, can be used to explain many directly observable properties of transmission, infection and immunity. In addition, their often striking beauty can stimulate further interest in virology. The structures of some virus particles have been determined experimentally in great detail, but for many important viruses a detailed description of the virus particle is lacking. This can be because they are challenging to describe with a single experimental method, or simply because of a lack of data. In these cases, methods from medical illustration can be applied to produce detailed visualisations of virus particles which integrate information from multiple sources. Here, we demonstrate how this approach was used to visualise the highly variable virus particles of influenza A viruses and, in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus particles of the then newly characterised and poorly described SARS-CoV-2. We show how constructing integrative illustrations of virus particles can challenge our thinking about the biology of viruses, as well as providing tools for science communication, and we provide a set of science communication resources to help visualise two viruses whose effects are extremely apparent to all of us.
Highlights
Viruses compel our attention and frustrate our imagination
To do so we will look at examples from two clinically important viruses – the influenza viruses and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
Virus particles are only one step in the virus replication cycle, and for many viruses they are absent during most stages of viral replication
Summary
Viruses compel our attention and frustrate our imagination. The impact of pathogenic viruses on everyday life is all too easy to observe, but viruses themselves are not a part of the visible world. The replication cycle of a virus involves large populations of closely-related nucleic acids propagating through, diffusing among and interacting directly with the teeming molecular complexity found within and between host cells Rather than picturing this mingling of molecules through multiple microscopic compartments, we typically use high-level abstractions such as the flow of genetic information, the activation of signalling pathways and the accumulation of infectious particles. We conventionally turn to the one part of the virus replication cycle that has a discrete and distinctive physical form, and which clearly separates viruses from other symbiotic nucleic acids such as plasmids or transposons [2] When they think of ‘viruses,’ most people will imagine the virus particles (or ‘virions’) that carry viral genomes from one cell the next. To do so we will look at examples from two clinically important viruses – the influenza viruses and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
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