Videos Disclose Bridge over Troubled Water

From Nature Cell Biology magazine:

Walther Mothes of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and his colleagues fluorescently labelled three retroviruses, including HIV, and tracked their movement between cells. Compressing a video of the process into a single picture reveals the tracks of viral particles (which appear green in the image) crossing cytoplasmic bridges. Interactions between a viral envelope protein and proteins on the uninfected cell surface seem to stabilize the bridges.

The experiments were performed in cell culture, but if the findings hold in vivo they could suggest new therapies to limit retroviral spread.

-Wes