SBIR-STTR Award

Virus structure determination using electron microscopy has become a useful research tool aimed at understanding viral assembly and infectivity. Our long term goal is to broaden the group of people able to determine virus structures by providing an integrated software suite for three-dimensional virus structure determination using electron microscopy. The software suite will allow easy, efficient, and routine determination of icosahedral virus structures from electron micrographs. Novel aspects of this software will include a comprehensive suite of tools for icosahedral structure determination, incorporation of an expert system to guide users through the reconstruction procedure, and data analysis tools to ensure that structures are determined accurately. In addition, the software will provide a consistent easy to use graphical user interface to all reconstruction tools including data analysis, data management, and data logging. The result of this phase one SBIR will be a design specification for an integrated software package allowing easy, efficient, and routine determination of virus structures by both virologists and structural biologists. Furthermore, one aspect of the reconstruction procedure will be targeted for development as a prototype to demonstrate project feasibility. The complete software product will be implemented and tested in a phase two SBIR.Proposed Commercial Applications:The availability of a comprehensive virus structure determination software package will have commercial implications to virologists, microbiologists, and other biologists interested in performing such structural studies but who are not trained in the intricacies of icosahedral virus structure determination. In addition, this software package will be of interest to structural biologists and electron microscopists as it will provide all of the software necessary for structural studies in one comprehensive extendable package.

Thesaurus Terms:
artificial intelligence, computer program /software, computer system design /evaluation, electron microscopy, structural biology, virus morphology computer data analysis, computer human interaction, data management, virus assembly

Virus structure determination using electron microscopy has become a useful research tool aimed at understanding viral assembly and infectivity to facilitate the design of anti-viral drugs and virus-based gene delivery systems. Our long term goal is to broaden the group of people able to determine virus structures by providing an integrated software suite for three-dimensional virus structure determination using electron microscopy. The software suite, called Tumbleweed, will allow easy, efficient, and routine determination of icosahedral virus structures from electron micrographs. Novel aspects of Tumbleweed will include a comprehensive suite of tools for icosahedral structure determination, incorporation of an expert system to guide users through the reconstruction procedure, and data analysis tools to ensure that structures are determined accurately. Tumbleweed will also provide a consistent easy to use graphical user interface to all reconstruction tools including data analysis, data management, and data logging. In addition, Tumbleweed will provide tools for image selection, quality assessment, and structure visualization that can be used with any electron microscopy structure determination method. Thus, in addition to virologists, target users include electron microscopists and structural biologists. The result of this Phase Il SBIR will be a completely integrated and tested software package allowing easy, efficient, and routine virus structure determination. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: Tumbleweed is targeted at a large group of users with varied knowledge, experience, and research goals. Virologists will be attracted to the extensive user guidance and intuitive design. Structural biologists and electron microscopists performing virus structure determination will be attracted to the concept of a complete integrated software package. Last, all electron microscopists and structural biologists will be attracted to the integration of all general data processing into a single extendible package. Combined this group should provide a large user-base allowing QED Labs to commercialize Tumbleweed successfully.

Thesaurus Terms:
artificial intelligence, computer program /software, computer system design /evaluation, electron microscopy, structural biology, virus morphology computer data analysis, computer human interaction, data management, molecular dynamics, virus assembly