what is the structure of H5N1 - (Aug/09/2014 )

How to describe the virion of H5N1? For many virus, they are icosahedral, and others are helical. For H5N1, how to describe it?

Spherical.

bob1 on Sat Aug 9 21:50:59 2014 said:

Spherical.

Thank you. But icosahedral virion is also spherical and is more accurate.

But influenza isn't an icosahedron... it is variable in shape, but roughly spherical. You could describe it as a "pleomorphic sphere" if you want technical terms.

Icosahedrons have a very defined shape, and it isn't spherical - it is a specific shape made up of 20 triangular faces, and a certain number of vertices and edges.  Icosahedron viruses may appear sort of spherical at low definition, but they are not spheres!

I think the architecture of the nucleoprotein of H5N1 is helical symmetry, but this helical protein forms a roughly spherical structure, with an envelope on the outside. So, if I want to describe the structure of capsid for many different viruses, for some, I use icosahedral and for H5N1, I can use helical.