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A novel coronavirus was found to be the cause of a respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China in 2019. 3D structural studies are aiding scientists to understand how the coronavirus infects humans and helping to find new ways to treat the viral spread (video by Fusion Animation).

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F Wang, Y Gu, JP O'Brien, SM Yi, SE Yalcin, V Srikanth, C Shen, D Vu, NL Ing, AI Hochbaum, EH Egelman, NS Malvankar. Cell 2019 doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.03.029
Bacteria living in anaerobic environments (no oxygen) need alternative electron acceptors in order to get energy from their food. An acceptor abundant in the earth's crust is red iron oxide ("rust"), which gets reduced to black iron oxide (magnetite). Many bacteria, such as Geobacter, get their metabolic energy by transferring electrons to acceptors that are multiple cell diameters distant, using protein nanowires. These were long thought to be pili. But when the structure of the nanowires was solved in 2019, to everyone's surprise, they turned out to be unprecedented linear polymers of multi-heme cytochromes. The hemes form an electrically conductive chain in the cores of these nanowires.

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Positive (+) and Negative (-) charges on the surface of a protein molecule play crucial roles in its interactions with other molecules, and hence in its functions. Electrostatic potential maps coloring the surface of a protein molecule are a popular way to visualize the distribution of surface charges. Easy to use free software is available to to create these surface maps. Above is an integral membrane potassium channel protein. One of its 4 identical chains is removed so you can see the Negative (-) protein surface contacting the 3 K+ ions.

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