Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Ebola Virus 3D Model: Staring Death in the Face #H5N1 #BIRDLFU


February 6th, 2012
by: Range
Made famous by its deadliness, the Ebola virus was first described in 1976. It was made famous by The Hot Zone by Richard Preston and some small epidemics that thankfully didn’t kill off most of the planet. While it never reached the epidemic levels feared, it’s still interesting to check out the intricacies of this 3D model of the deadly virus.
ebola virus poster 01
This intricate 3D model was done by Visual Science and it’s based on X-ray analysis and data that was published in the last twenty years. Some of the protein structures were predicted using computer modeling techniques.
ebola virus poster 02
This new model is 10 times more complex than the last one they did of HIV, which is kind of astounding. Where can I print mine?
ebola virus poster 03
[via designyoutrusthttp://technabob.com/blog/2012/02/06/ebola-virus-3d-model/

1 comment:

Duff Smith said...

It was Richard Preston's book on the outbreak of this virus that got me interested in watching for news of emerging viruses.

As scary as Ebola outbreaks are, this virus does not seem to have what it takes to become a pandemic. There was a program on the Discovery Channel back in 2000 that described a Russian effort to make a weaponized pandemic version, which was actually unsuccessful. The same was not true with its cousin, the Marburg virus. According to that TV program, a former weapons scientist claimed thay succeeded and so we may assume it exists in a Russian freezer somewhere. Not a word of this ever appeared on the TV anywhere, anytime after 9/11. So, I regard the recent flu experiments with a bit of perspective.