JUNE ALMEIDA was born the year the virus first appeared. it is she who will image it in electron microscopy for the first time 30 years later

Coronavirus. The word keeps coming up in conversations, the press, social media, medical journals. Since the beginning of the year, the number of scientific publications relating to the coronavirus SARS-COV-2 has exploded. In the PubMed biomedical database, there are nearly 1,800 articles including the term coronavirus, Covid-19 or SARS-CoV-2 in their titles.

SARS-COV-2, responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic, belongs to the family of coronaviruses, viruses which carry projections on their surface, clearly visible by electron microscopy. The coronavirus envelope indeed contains surface proteins S (for Spike, spicule) which form protuberances similar to small golf clubs or petals. Rooted in the viral membrane, the S proteins give the virions a crown appearance. This is the origin of the name assigned to this family of viruses, the term corona meaning crown in Latin.

From Beijing to Paris, via Rome and Madrid, the international medical and scientific community is mobilizing against SARS-CoV-2, the last representative of the coronavirus family. Here are their stories.

The 1930s

The first coronavirus discovered is an animal virus, responsible in poultry for a highly contagious acute respiratory disease. Its name: avian infectious bronchitis virus ( Infectious Bronchitis Virus , IBV). The disease it causes was first observed in 1930 in North Dakota (United States).

As the Covid-19 continues to rage the world, the spotlight is back on Dr. June Almeida, a Scottish virologist who pioneered new methods for viral imaging and diagnosis and discovered the first Human Coronavirus.

Born as June Dalziel Hart, in 1930, daughter-of a Scottish bus driver in Glasgow

june was born the year the virus first appeared.
it is she who will image it in electron microscopy for the first time 30 years later
it is she who will image it in electron microscopy for the first time 30 years later