ARS-CoV-2 spike EM

They spent 12 years solving a puzzle. It yielded the first COVID-19 vaccines.

Long before anyone knew of SARS-CoV-2, a small band of government and university scientists uncovered a prototypical key that unlocked life-saving immunizations.

The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which allows the virus to break into cells, is a shapeshifter. By making it sit still, scientists uncovered a key to rapidly making coronavirus vaccines. This image is a false-colored, electron-density map acquired via cryogenic electron microscopy.

Image by Daniel Wrapp, University of Texas at Austin

Jason McLellan was wandering around a ski shop of Utah’s Park City Mountain Resort, waiting for his new snowboarding boots to be heat-molded to his size-nine feet, when his smartphone rang. It was Barney Graham, deputy director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Vaccine Research Center.

Two days earlier, the World Health Organization had announced that several unidentified pneumonia-like cases had been reported in Wuhan, China. People were fatigued and feverish, with dry coughs and headaches. These symptoms weren’t unusual for early January, but some people were short of breath, and a few felt like they’d been hit by a train.

This duo was part of a small band of government and university scientists who had spent

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