HIV Virions

What am I looking at?

This is a colored scanning electron microscopy image of human immunodeficiency viruses infecting a T cell. In the main image, the virus particles are yellow (1) and the T cell is blue (2).

Click on the right arrow to see an alternate image, made using transmission electron microscopy, which shows a single gold virus particle attached to a gray T cell.

Biology in the background

HIV/AIDS is one of the most well-known viral diseases in the world. This extremely deadly disease has spread all over the world, and it has is no known cure. Today, however, treatment can lower the viral load so significantly that it is no longer detectable, and patients can live long and relatively normal lives while infected.

HIV spreads through direct contact, including sexual contact, with the bodily fluids of infected individuals. Once individuals are infected, the HIV targets their T cells, a type of white blood cell. When they’re healthy, T cells identify and destroy pathogens in the bloodstream, earning a subset of them the descriptive name “killer T cells.” However, HIV invades and destroys these T cells, leaving the immune system less equipped to handle other infections.

These virions are extremely small, about 115 nanometers across, or roughly 650 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Technique

These images were created using electron microscopy.