Dissecting Virus Infectious Cycles by Cryo-Electron Microscopy

In response to events such as receptor binding and endocytic triggers, viruses undergo largescale, dynamic conformational changes necessary for cell entry and genome delivery. In later stages of the infectious cycle, replication machinery must read and synthesize nucleic acid strands to generate new copies of genetic material, and structural proteins must assemble and package the appropriate contents in order to produce new infectious particles. Structural elucidation of these events is key to understanding them and their inhibition by antiviral agents such as neutralizing antibodies and drugs. Electron microscopy is a versatile technique that offers the ability to resolve three-dimensional structures of individual viral proteins and whole virions in multiple functional states, even in cells at different stages of infection (Fig 1). Here we focus on the use of transmission electron microscopy of frozen-hydrated specimens, i.e., cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM). A major advantage of cryo-EM over other structural