Viral Infection at High Magnification: 3D Electron Microscopy Methods to Analyze the Architecture of Infected Cells

Abstract

As obligate intracellular parasites, viruses need to hijack their cellular hosts and reprogram their machineries in order to replicate their genomes and produce new virions. For the direct visualization of the different steps of a viral life cycle (attachment, entry, replication, assembly and egress) electron microscopy (EM) methods are extremely helpful. While conventional EM has given important information about virus-host cell interactions, the development of three-dimensional EM (3D-EM) approaches provides unprecedented insights into how viruses remodel the intracellular architecture of the host cell. During the last years several 3D-EM methods have been developed. Here we will provide a description of the main approaches and examples of innovative applications.

Keywords

• transmission electron microscopy
• electron tomography
• serial sectioning
• scanning transmission electron microscopy
• serial block face-scanning electron microscopy
• focus ion beam-scanning electron microscopy
• virus-host interactions
• cell membranes
• ultrastructure
• cryo-EM