Virus trading cards

These are seriously cool, I love the look and design. Can't seem to find a source for who created them but this is what they had to say about the process:

This week I made a set of virus trading cards! Viruses are surprisingly symmetrical, and I love them because they remind me of a biological version of snowflakes. Each trading card shows you the structure of the viral capsid - the protein shell protecting the genetic material inside a virus.

To make the 3D animations I used UCSF Chimera, a free molecular modeling program. When scientists discover a new protein structure they upload it to the worldwide Protein Data Bank. Each entry is assigned a unique ID number, which you can use to call up the structure in programs like Chimera or PyMol.

I used Tom Goddard’s tutorial to learn how to display viral capsids, and it’s actually a fairly simple process. You can even 3D print structures straight from Chimera, which is awesome and might have to be my next project.