This image was taken  to understand how viral machinery localizes within human cells. The utilized and repurposed viral machinery from the murine leukemia virus was used as the basis of the technology. The approach was to express the core MLV structural protein, Gag, which is sufficient to create virus-like particles. Then Gag was fused to a fluorescent protein and expressed this fusion protein with human cells to track the assembly of virus-like particles.

The goal of the research is to create a technology that allows for the measurement of a cell’s transcriptional state while keeping the cell alive. This image was some of the early evidence in the project that the viral machinery could be expressed within human cells and assemble into virus-like particles.