The National Institute for the Study of Allergies and Infectious Diseases of the United States (NIAID), together with Rocky Mountains Laboratories (RML), published the first photographs of the Covid-19 coronavirus obtained using a scanning electron microscope. Contrary to the idea of him, as a killer virus, he looks surprisingly aesthetically pleasing.
In the first photo (the virus is taken from the patient in the United States), viral particles painted in yellow are visible at the time of exit from the cell, which is painted in blue and pink colors. All colors are conditional, they are added only for the convenience of perception.
The next image is not so clear compared to the previous one, however, here we see processes on the surface of the body of the virus, reminiscent of the crown, which give the coronavirus its name.
By the way, coronaviruses are a whole family, which also includes SARS (the virus of “atypical pneumonia”) and Mers (the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome virus, the outbreak of which occurred in 2015 in South Korea). They differ from each other at the genome level. There are five nucleotide differences between the three viruses that significantly affect the nature of the infection.
Source — niaid