In a feat of visualization that could help scientists understand not only HIV but all viruses, researchers have taken the first real-time images of a viral unit assembling inside a living cell.

“This is the first time anyone has seen a virus particle being born,” said study co-author Paul Bieniasz, a Rockefeller University virologist.

The pictures, published Sunday in Nature, were taken with a microscope that sends light into cells at a sharp angle, rather than straight-on. This allowed the researchers to focus narrowly on an HIV-infected cell's surface, where the molecular bits and pieces hijacked by the virus gathered to form a new viral particle, or virion.

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Until now, scientists' knowledge of viral assembly came from biochemical analyses of viral components, or from examination of cells frozen at different stages of infection -- the research equivalent of snapshots and reverse-engineered blueprints rather than eyewitness recordings.

“The use of this technique is almost unlimited," said study co-author Nolwenn Jouvenet. "Now that we can actually see a virus being born, it gives us the opportunity to answer previously unanswered questions, not only in virology but in biology in general.”

Imaging the biogenesis of individual HIV-1 virions in live cells [Nature]

Image: Courtesy of Nature, HIV viral particles assembling at the surface of a cell. The vaguely egg-like blob is the cell; the pinpoints of white come from gathering virion, which had been tagged with fluorescent molecules that glowed in strength proportional to their numerical density.

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