Deadly Bullet-shaped rhabdoviruses

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Some viruses are our friends, some are our deadly enemies. The bullet-shaped rhabdoviruses are both. On one plus side, there's vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), the core of several promising new vaccines. Then there's rabies, among the deadliest viruses known.

It has never before been clear how these viruses' three structural proteins and RNA genome come together to form their bullet shape.

Now, using ultra-fine electron microscopy, Z. Hong Zhou at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues have shown that the RNA and proteins wind together in a precise order, starting at the top of the bullet, to form two nested helices. Such structural insights may one day help us fight VSV's less benign cousins (Science, vol 327, p 689, DOI: 10.1126/science.1181766).

(Image: Z. Hong Zhou/Science)