Structural biology and imaging platform

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High-resolution imaging technologies are powerful tools to help us understand how viruses cause disease. The structural biology and imaging platform provides access to state-of-the-art tools to allow visualisation of viral processes, supported by expert technologists. The platform supports the investigation of virus behaviour across scales ranging from resolving the atomic structure of the molecules that virus particles (virions) are made up of and how they interact with those of the infected host, through to imaging viruses in infected tissues.These tools will be used by investigators in the CVR to understand e.g., how viruses can attach to and enter host cells, and how the molecules that perform this vital function evolve to avoid the host immune response; how cells can respond to the presence of a virus by for example making special structures to wrap up the viral genome and stop it expressing, or shutting down host processes that the virus needs to replicate; how populations of viruses can interact with each other as they move through an organ such as the lung; and how viruses assemble and leave an infected cell.