Our attempt at an Adeno-associated virus and an Anellovirus
Thank you to the MRC, the University of Glasgow and the Centre for Virus Research for the paper art viruses. We've made a start on a couple of the easy ones.
Why are they symmetric?
From the PDF, viruses "have to be assembled from an extremely limited set of components, using the same building blocks repeatedly." They can be enveloped and "form as a twenty-sided shape – an icosahedron. A side view of an icosahedron is roughly hexagonal, giving it the same symmetry as a snowflake."
Or they can be "wrapped in a layer of membrane [...] Surface tension tends to pull membranes into spheres, and proteins that float in them or within them tend to spread out to a roughly even spacing."
Either way, we get to have fun with scissors.
WIP on an RNA Vaccine ("This is not a virus, but in many ways it behaves like one.")
