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July 14, 2011

Virus in three dimensions

To help scientists understand how the Penicillium stoloniferum virus interacts with its hosts, and how it replicates and matures over its life cycle, the virus structure was solved at the very high resolution of 7.3 angstroms. Running the automated AUTO3DEM software on a San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) supercomputer, the full 3-D virus was reconstructed starting with 2-D cryo-electron microscopy images. The software was developed by University of California, San Diego (UCSD), structural biologists Tim Baker and Xiaodong Yan, with SDSC computational scientist Robert Sinkovits. The National Science Foundation is the primary funding source for the SDSC. [Image taken from the SDSC Multimedia Gallery.] (Date of Image: 2008)

Credit: W.F. Ochoa, R.S. Sinkovits and T.S. Baker, UCSD; W.M. Havens and S.A. Ghabrial, U. Kentucky; M.A. Nibert, Harvard. Image: W.F. Ochoa, UCSD; source: San Diego Supercomputer Center, UC-San Diego

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