VirusMapper - open-source nanoscale mapping of viral architecture through super-resolution microscopy

Authors: Robert DM Gray, Corina Beerli, Pedro Matos Pereira, Kathrin Maria Scherer, Jerzy Samolej, Christopher Karl Ernst Bleck, Jason Mercer, Ricardo Henriques
Technologies: NanoJ-VirusMapper
Paper published in Scientific reports, January 2016
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK London

The manuscript "VirusMapper: open-source nanoscale mapping of viral architecture through super-resolution microscopy" describes the development of an open-source analytical framework called VirusMapper, which combines super-resolution imaging and naïve single-particle analysis to generate unbiased molecular models of viral structure. The tool is designed to be high-throughput, user-friendly, and ImageJ-based, allowing for automatic statistical mapping of conserved multi-molecular structures within virions. The authors demonstrate the usability of VirusMapper by applying it to SIM and STED images of vaccinia virus, generating accurate, high-content, molecular specific virion models and detecting nanoscale changes in viral architecture. The method is expected to work for high quality single-molecule localization microscopy data as well.