Viral ssRNAs Are Indeed Compact

Viral ssRNAs are indeed compact.

DNA is the genetic material of all living things, except for viruses, most of which have genomes that are RNA – not DNA. Further, the majority of viral RNA genomes are single stranded (ss) rather than duplex chains. The simplest of these ssRNA viruses, whether infecting bacteria, plants, or animals, involve a single copy of their genome, protected (“packaged”) by a single-molecule-thick spheric...

Viral RNAs Are Unusually Compact

A majority of viruses are composed of long single-stranded genomic RNA molecules encapsulated by protein shells with diameters of just a few tens of nanometers. We examine the extent to which these viral RNAs have evolved to be physically compact molecules to facilitate encapsulation. Measurements of equal-length viral, non-viral, coding and non-coding RNAs show viral RNAs to have among the sma...

Small crystals, fast dynamics and noisy data are indeed beautiful

Structural biology at hard X-ray free-electron lasers is evolving rapidly beyond the experimental styles long established at storage ring sources. The comprehensive review by John Spence [IUCrJ (2017), 4, 322-339] provides magisterial oversight of recent developments.

Difficile indeed.

How Viral Are Viral Videos?

Within only a few years after the launch of video sharing platforms, viral videos have become a pervasive Internet phenomenon. Yet, notwithstanding growing scholarly interest, the suitability of the viral metaphor seems not to have been studied so far. In this paper, we therefore investigate the attention dynamics of viral videos from the point of view of mathematical epidemiology. We introduce...