美國洛克菲勒大學科學家在《自然》雜志上發表了一篇介紹新顯微鏡技術的 文章，這項技術能夠只“照亮”細胞的表面。利用這一技術，科學家首次實 時、清晰地觀察到了無數分子在活細胞中形成單個HIV粒子的過程。這一成果 將可能在開發艾滋病治療方案方面提供幫助，並將改變艾滋病研究者的思考 方式。 這一新的技術稱為全內反射顯微鏡方法（total internal reflection microscopy），與傳統的顯微鏡照亮整個細胞不同，它僅僅照亮HIV聚集的細 胞表面。在這項技術的幫助下，能夠非常詳細地觀察到細胞表面發生的情況 。利用這一技術，研究人員觀察了HIV粒子裝配的過程，並記錄下了每個HIV 粒子裝配所需的時間──5到6分鐘。研究人員表示，這是首次觀察到病毒粒 子誕生過程。並不僅僅限于HIV，可以是任何病毒。通過親眼所見而不是推斷 病毒粒子的裝配過程，將提升我們思考問題的層次。這一技術的應用非常廣 泛，它給了我們機會來回答那些之前無法回答的問題，不僅僅是病毒學方面 ，還包括一般的生物學方面。 Imaging the biogenesis of individual HIV-1 virions in live cells Observations of individual virions in live cells have led to the characterization of their attachment, entry and intracellular transport1. However, the assembly of individual virions has never been observed in real time. Insights into this process have come primarily from biochemical analyses of populations of virions or from microscopic studies of fixed infected cells. Thus, some assembly properties, such as kinetics and location, are either unknown or controversial2, 3, 4, 5. Here we describe quantitatively the genesis of individual virions in real time, from initiation of assembly to budding and release. We studied fluorescently tagged derivatives of Gag, the major structural component of HIV-1─which is sufficient to drive the assembly of virus-like particles6─with the use of fluorescence resonance energy transfer, fluorescence recovery after photobleaching and total-internal-reflection fluorescent microscopy in living cells. Virions appeared individually at the plasma membrane, their assembly rate accelerated as Gag protein accumulated in cells, and typically 5C6 min was required to complete the assembly of a single virion. These approaches allow a previously unobserved view of the genesis of individual virions and the determination of parameters of viral assembly that are inaccessible with conventional techniques. --

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