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To see the stereo effect, please gaze at infinity at a point between the two images. You should eventually see three images. The middle image will be a combination of the left and right images and it should look solid (stereo or 3d). The effect can sometimes be improved by holding a sheet of paper or card perpendicular to the image pair so that your left eye only sees the left image and your right eye only sees the right image. To focus, move your head closer to or further from the image. It might take a few tries to achieve the effect. The golden spikes (or knobs) are the trimeric envelope proteins that help the virus to attach to target cells. They are composed of gp120 (outer knob) and gp41 (stalk, trans-membrane section, and cytoplasmic tail). Next comes the viral envelope (translucent green) derived from the host cell plasma membrane during budding of the virus particle. Immediately beneath the viral envelope envelope lie the matrix proteins (MA: blue cage-like structure). Lying across the internal space is the purple capsid (or core). This bullet-shaped structure contains the viral genome (in the case of HIV this is two strands of RNA) and the enzyme reverse transcriptase. |