Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2
This transmission electron microscope image shows 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S., and emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab.
Credit: NIAID-RML
Note: the official name for the disease is COVID-19. The virus that causes the disease is known as nCoV, and 2019-nCoV, and sometimes SARS-CoV-2.
It's well understood in science education that students are more engaged when they work on problems that matter. Right now, Zika virus matters. Zika is a very scary problem that matters a great deal to anyone who might want to start a family and greatly concerns my students. I teach a bioinformatics course where students use computational tools to research biology. Since my students are learning how to use tools that can be applied to this problem, I decided to have them apply their new bioinformatics skills to identify drugs that work against Zika virus. We don't have the lab facilities ... Read more
