October 4, 2010


Today’s image is a first for HighMag…I’m showing a second image from the paper that provided Thursday’s image. This is a fantastic paper, and has great images using different techniques to show the authors’ take-home message.

M2 is a protein from the influenza virus that is able to shape and release a newly-replicated budded virus particle out of an infected cell, allowing the infection of more cells. Thursday’s image showed the ability of a domain of the M2 protein to induce budding on a synthesized vesicle. Today’s image shows the localization of M2 at the neck of budding virus particles (red arrows). The authors determined the localization of M2 using electron microscopy and immuno-gold labeling, which means that tiny gold beads are attached to antibodies able to find M2. The little beads represent M2 localization in the image above, with bottom images showing a higher magnification.

Reference: Jeremy S. Rossman, Xianghong Jing, George P. Leser and Robert A. Lamb. Cell 142 (17), 902-913. ©2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Paper can be found here.

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