The CDC and WHO are giving us good advice on what do in this Plague Year. The Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) is showing us the molecule causing the havoc. Check out the structures of the various flavors of Coronavirus at The Protein Database (PDB). Click on the images, most of which will go to detailed pages including 3D models that can be spun in the browser. Knowledge will be power in dealing with this beast and let’s offer thanks to the research groups who took the lead in characterizing it which must have come at considerable risk to themselves. When it mutates, and it will, they and others will undoubtedly don their capes and do the measurements again.
It is damnably, horrifyingly beautiful in David Goodsell’s artistic rendering of it infecting a lung:
Acknowledgement: Illustration by David S. Goodsell, RCSB Protein Data Bank; doi: 10.2210/rcsb_pdb/goodsell-gallery-019
License: CC-BY-4.0
Image used unmodified and there is no endorsement from or by the artist