Computational biologist and science illustrator reveals his vision of a coronavirus

A computational biologist and science illustrator has painted a coronavirus, and recently revealed his creation, which shows the coronavirus as it entered the lungs.

Individuals who follow David Goodsell on Twitter have seen the progression of this painting since January 27, when he began documenting his progress. But, these viruses are so small that they cannot be viewed under a microscope. Goodsell uses scientific data and models to put together their images of these viruses.

Although the various coronaviruses act differently within the body, there are structural similarities.

What makes Goodsell’s painting different from others is that he depicts coronavirus surrounded by mucus, as it entered the lungs. This coronavirus is surrounded by secreted antibodies and immune system proteins. The virus is covered with a membrane that includes the spike protein involved in attachment and entry into cells, the membrane protein that is involved in the organization of the nucleoprotein inside, as well as the envelope, the membrane channel that is part of the virus budding process. The nucleoprotein inside includes many copies of the N (nucleocapsid) protein bound to the genomic RNA.”

The spikes, envelope, or the capsid are formed by proteins with unique structures. Scientists realized what several structures in a coronavirus that caused the SARS outbreak looked like and put them into the RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB), which Goodsell used to create his painting.

“I base these paintings on as much information as I can find, so I chose SARS because there is a massive amount of work on it,” Goodsell told Current Science Daily. “As information on 2019-nCov has been dribbling out, it is looking to be similar.”

While Goodsell’s painting isn’t an exact depiction of a coronavirus, it is an approximation, with pink spike proteins, a lavender nucleocapsid, and greenish yellow for the mucus background.  The colors are not entirely representative, because an electron microscope cannot show the exact colors (because the individual proteins are too small to see or have a color).