Physics Professor Klaus Schulten and postdoctoral researcher Juan Perilla are part of a team that used experimental data and computer simulations to determine the precise chemical structure of the HIV capsid.
(Credit: L. Brian Stauffer)
Scientists have been investigating the structure of the HIV capsid for years; the protein shell protects the virus’ genetic material, helps debilitate the infected person’s immune system, and is the target for the development of new antiretroviral drugs. Research teams have turned to a wide range of futuristic-sounding techniques to crack the code, from cryo-electron microscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to cryo-EM tomography and X-ray crystallography.
Now, thanks to a little help from the supercomputer Blue Waters, the mystery finally has been unraveled, according to a research team reporting this week in the journal Nature.
Blue Waters, a relatively new supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is a rare breed of petascale supercomputers, which means it can manage one quadrillion floating point operations every second. It was able to piece together the entire HIV capsid — which consists of more … [Read more]
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