Wheel clamping flu

This is not an animation but a colour-enhanced part of an actual flu virus.

This hot of the scientific press video shows for the first time its most complete, detailed machinery. The ball at the bottom contains the anchor that attaches it to the rest of the flu virus; the spike at the top is the part that pierces the body's cells and then infects them.

But this virus has been immobilised by the three molecules above the ball, which are part of the immune system. In this instance, the virus has been wheel-clamped by the body's natural defences but it gives researchers new ideas about how to develop drugs that work in the same way.

(Credit Donald Benton/Francis Crick Institute, London).