Although researchers have been studying AIDS for nearly three decades, until this year no one had ever witnessed HIV—or any other viral particles—forming inside a cell.
Researchers at Rockefeller University in New York City tweaked the genetic program of HIV so that an essential protein, a building block of the virus, would turn fluorescent. They then used an imaging technique that zeroes in on a thin layer of a specimen to examine the surface of an HIV-infected cell. Within six minutes the scientists observed glowing spheres that looked like virus particles.
Seeing the potential virus was the easy part, says cell biologist Sanford Simon of Rockefeller University. Demonstrating that the glowing spheres really were developing viruses proved more challenging. Using several molecular tricks, Simon and his colleagues showed that the spheres contained tightly packed molecules that grew to a certain size and then stopped. By using a kind of cellular ...
