The twelve viruses of Christmas, and how to make your own – out of paper |
Viruses, as we all know, are invisibly small things that make us sick. But is that the whole story?
Zoom in close enough and you’ll discover the complex, unseen world of viruses. Some do make us sick, but many others simply exist alongside us as part of the natural world. Most are very beautiful and many, it turns out, look a bit like snowflakes.
It’s the time of year for seasonal decorations. So the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research has created a set of papercraft virus snowflakes you can print and cut out. They’re a fun way to explore the viruses around us this winter – and the vaccines that protect us from them.
Here are some of our favourites.
An elegantly decorated adenovirus, just 100 nanometres across – that’s a ten-thousandth of a millimetre, or smaller than a quarter of the wavelength of visible light.
Many viruses use repeating protein blocks to package their genetic material (genome) into regular, rounded “capsids”. The geminiviruses of plants pull off a beautiful geometrical........