CSC Visualization Group


Electron Microscopy Tomography (EMT) of Uukuniemi Virus

Electron Microscopy Tomography (EMT) of Uukuniemi (Bunyaviridae) Virus


Peter Engelhardt,
Department of Virology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Juha Ruokolainen,
CSC, Espoo, Finland

Electron microscope pictures were taken at angles of +-60 degrees with 3 degree increments. The virus was briefly stained with uranylacetate in methanol and freeze-dried from t-butanol before the photography. These pictures were aligned (see e.g. /1/) as regards to rotations, translations, and scaling using colloidal (5-10nm diameter) gold particles as reference points (you can see two of the gold particles in the movie below, sphere like objects colored red). After the alignment the reconstruction was made using the weighted back projection-method (see e.g. /2/).

The EM was done at Department of Virology, University of Helsinki by Peter Engelhardt and Carl-Henrik von Bonsdorff. The EMT reconstruction and the rendering (FUNCS) were made with programs developed at CSC by Juha Ruokolainen .

A volume rendered movie of the reconstruction, viewpoint changing with 3 degree increments around the tilt axis is shown here.


The size of the movie is ~211 Kb

The animation below is a red-green stereo picture series of the virus


The size of the movie is ~136 Kb

References


Available on the World Wide Web as http://www.csc.fi/jpr/jpr/emt/movies/virus.html

1994 / Juha Ruokolainen . Centre for Scientific Computing, Espoo, Finland