3D printing the Herpes Simplex virus

June 21, 2010

Shapeways community member David Bhella 3D printed a 5 CM model of the Herpes Simplex Virus. The Herpes was as a gift for a retiring professor. Presumably, said professor is one of only a small group of people that are glad to have been given herpes. Intrigued I asked David to tell us more about what he does at the MRC Virology Unit, Institute of Virology, University of Glasgow with 3D printing.

Joris Peels: Why are you interested in 3D printing?

David Bhella: I am interested in all aspects of 3D technology (rapid prototyping, 3D displays and commercial 3D animation software), as my work is entirely focused on solving the structures of viruses in three-dimensions and I find visualisation in 2D media deeply unsatisfactory.

I think that rapid prototyping is a really interesting way of allowing one to appreciate the complexity and symmetry of viruses. Holding the model in your hand is such a ‘human’ way of understanding an object. Unfortunately the potential for understanding these structures at high-resolution cannot be realised in this manner, because proteins are extremely complex molecules, and a virus is a complex assembly of proteins.  So, the Herpes model I have printed through Shapeways is comparatively low-resolution (about 2.5 nanometers resolution – the object itself is 125 nanometers in diameter). We are now working at better than one nanometer resolution. At this level the 3D shape of individual protein molecules becomes visible, showing us how they fold up. To show this as a polygon surface becomes less meaningful then, and we have to start looking at more complex means of visualisation, also the poly count becomes so high that commercial 3D software cannot handle it.

For the moment then, the strength of 3D printing is in teaching and in public engagement (and in bespoke gifts for retiring professors). I am really enthusiastic about the prospect of producing large metal sculptures of virus particles that people can handle and walk around, I think that the beauty and symmetry of viruses really highlights the elegance of nature and evolutionary processes.  As I am the scientist responsible for public engagement in my department, I am lucky enough to be able to dedicate some of my time to this area. Furthermore, my wife is head of the science team in our local science museum (Glasgow Science Centre), so I have access to a great venue for P.E activities, which is staffed by motivated and enthusiastic science communicators who can help me.  A couple of years ago we created an art exhibition called molecular machines ( http://www.molecularmachines.org.uk/), which got a lot of media attention. I think it would be great to produce a molecular machines 2.0 that exploited the latest in 3D panel displays and 3D printing.

Joris Peels: What do you do?

David Bhella: I work on many aspects of the virus life-cycle using cutting-edge electron microscopy and image processing techniques to understand the structures of viruses in three-dimensions. Viruses are the smallest of pathogens to infect man and range from ~30 – 500 nm in size (A nanometer is 1/1000th of a micrometer which is 1/1000th of a millimeter). They reproduce themselves by invading our cells and hijacking the cellular machinery to make thousands more viruses particles. As they have a very small number of genes, they assemble from multiple copies of only a few types of protein. They are therefore highly symmetrical, employing either helical or icosahedral symmetry to make a shell (called a capsid) that ferries their genome between cells while protecting it from damage.

So, we take 2D images in the transmission electron microscope and use image processing methods to average together images of thousands of particles into a 3D reconstruction. I attach a raw image from the microscope of a Feline calicivirus. I am interested in this virus as it is from the same family of viruses as the noroviruses that cause winter vomiting disease.

Joris Peels: Was it just fun?

David Bhella: It is always fun!