Single‐Particle Tracking: Single‐Particle Tracking of Hepatitis B Virus‐like Vesicle Entry into Cells (Small 9/2011)

The cover image shows the visualization of the entry of a Hepatitis B virus-like vesicle (HBsAg) into a cell. HBsAg (shown as red particles) is used as a model to study the infection mechanisms and dynamics of the single-enveloped virus in living cells by real-time fluorescence microscopy. HBsAg is found to enter cells via a caveolin-mediated endocytic pathway (caveolin: yellow). By tracking individual HBsAg particles in living cells, the anomalously actin-dependent but not microtubule-dependent motility of internalized HBsAg particles is revealed (actin: green). The motility of HBsAg particles in living cells was also analyzed quantitatively. The results may potentially settle the long-term debate of whether hepatitis B viruses directly break the plasma membrane barrier or rely on endocytosis to infect the cell. For more information, please read the Full Paper “Single-Particle Tracking of Hepatitis B Virus-like Vesicle Entry into Cells” by Z. Huang, Z. Tang, H. Wang, and co-workers, beginning on page 1212.