Watch viral assembly right before your eyes.

Well, sorta. In these first 3 movie demonstrations of capsid asembly they have taken icosahedral shaped virus replicas (just like HCV) and divided them along the edges of the pentagons which comprise an icosahedron. The models in these 3 movies have small imbedded magnets along the sides of the polygons to mimic the natural attraction of electrostatic forces which are used to help the virus assemble and stay together in real life.

Conditions have to be optimal before efficient viral assembly can take place. The right chemicals have to be present and at the right temperature before this process can take place.  The shaking of the tube in the movies equates to the thermodynamic conditions. If the tube is shaken too fast or too slow the assembly will not take place or will be terribly inefficient.  When the shaking has the right speed and motion the virus replicas assemble rather quickly considering. In the movie which has 2 viral replicas in the tube you can see them actually trade "parts" back and forth until the perfect combination is found that provides the most stable particle. In the human body this process takes but nanoseconds as the conditions are perfect for the task.

I put the 3 demo movies first. If that grabs someone's attention it may help with the links that follow.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2410070

Movies to support the experiments: (You gotta see these !)
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=2410070&blobname=pnas_0709489104_index.html

http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/mmi/stannard/virarch.html

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=524855

http://www.microbiologybytes.com/introduction/structure.html

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=524849#id309412

http://www.biophysj.org/cgi/content/full/88/3/1991

http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/y0x3e74fh4v927bh/fulltext.pdf

Mr Liver

[Marcia2202]

Very interesting stuff... the videos sure grabbed my attention... but the reading is a bit too challenging for my txing brain... Very scientific... I don't know if i want to get that deep into the nitty gritty of this disease. It is surely getting more and more complicated.

Thanks for posting and sharing knowledge.

Marcia