Capturing Enveloped Viruses on Affinity Grids for Downstream Cryo-Electron Tomography Applications

Enveloped viruses are a large population of known viruses that are human and animal pathogens. Therefore, studies to determine the overall architecture and fine ultrastructure of enveloped viruses are essential. All enveloped viruses are covered by a lipid-coat derived from the host cell’s plasma membrane. Due to the processes associated with virus assembly and budding many of them exhibit varying degrees of structural irregularity or pleiomorphism. This structural variability can express itself as slight alterations to the size and internal architecture of the virus, such as with members of the Retroviridae family, to significant variations in the size and shape of the virus, as observed with members of the Orthomyxoviridae and Paramyxoviridae families [1].