3-D virus cam catches germs red-handed

Before germs like viruses can make you sick, they first have to make a landing on one of your cells—Mars Rover style—and then punch their way inside. A team of physical chemists at Duke is building a microscope so powerful that it can spot these minuscule germs in the act of infection. The team has created a new 3D “virus cam” that can spy on tiny viral germs as they wriggle around in real time. In a video caught by the microscope, you can watch as a lentivirus bounces and jitters through an area a little wider that a human hair. Next, they hope to develop this technique into a multi-functional “magic camera” that will let them see not only the dancing viruses, but also the much larger cell membranes they are trying breech. “Really what we are trying to investigate is the very first contacts of the virus with the cell surface—how...