Flu Attack! How A Virus Invades Your Body

By Robert Krulwich

It starts very simply. A virus, just one, latches on to one of your cells and fools that cell into making lots more. Lots, lots more, like a million new viruses. This animation shows you how viruses trick healthy cells to join the dark side.

David Bolinsky and his team at XVIVO designed this animation for a research company called Zirus (and we thank Zirus for letting us play with their pictures). Bolinsky says what you see in the video actually happens much, much faster in real life — in a fraction of a fraction of a second. So this is a very slow motion version of cellular activity.

And for those of you who were wondering, yes, the designers did add color. Proteins, DNA, organelles, and the teeny things inside a human cell are so small, and the insides of cells are so dark, that for all practical purposes, they are colorless.

So the copying molecule isn’t really pink. But once you decide to colorize, pink is just as accurate as maroon or yellow.

Read full story on the NPR web site.