Month: October 2011

Measles is an important disease worldwide that is highly infectious, causing the deaths of over 100000 people annually. We used advanced electron microscopy and image processing methods to make a a three-dimensional model of measles virus. The new model helps to explain many previous, unaccounted for observations in the life cycle of the virus. Measles virus belongs to a family of viruses whose members are all pleomorphic enveloped viruses. All the members of this family contain a so called matrix protein which in measles virus coats the ribonucleoparticle making a “rigatoni-like” helix. More details from the original article by Liljeroos et al in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA)