This isn't a cartoon tree or some strange piece of modern art. In fact, it's what researchers from the University of Texas at Austin saw when they managed to observe a virus in the act of penetrating a cell.
In the image, you can see a T7 virus (red) burrowing its way into an E. coli bacterium (green). The six yellow strands are actually rudimentary legs, which allow the virus to crawl over cells to find a weak spot and then infect them.
The image is the first time scientists have observed a virus inserting its tail into a cell to infect it. It's believed that the process allows it to infect a cell directly with its DNA. The weirdest part? The fact that this all happens in your body, too. More here.
3 comments:
This is such a crazy re-inaction, really interesting to see how this works and seeing something that's small in quite a big larger scale, interesting stuff buddy, thanks for sharing this as usual.
It is quite odd. I though viruses are not alive?
wow, that was me being violated last week by that nasty throat infection. BASTARDS
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