We wondered why so many infections fail to progress through all life-cycle stages. We combined our live-cell imaging technologies with multiplexed smFISH and found that many viruses fail to transcribe one or multiple genes.

To capture the late-stage event of new virions budding off, we developed a second, orthogonal technique that visualizes the build-up of HA-protein on the cell surface of infected cells and even labels budding virions.

Using this technology we show for the first time the moment that virions fuse with the endosomal membrane and release vRNPs step-by-step into the host cell

Influenza viruses are segmented, negative-sense RNA viruses that, like other (-)RNA viruses, have their genomes encapsidated by nucleoproteins (NP). We exploited this characteristic to visualize single, unmodified IAV genomes by expressing a fluorescently labelled nanobody that binds to NP.

Very happy to share our preprint on visualizing the life cycle of Influenza viruses using single-molecule imaging! 🥳 We developed two techniques to visualize infections of unmodified influenza viruses in live cells from endosomal release to budding of new viruses. For more details&videos see below ⬇️