Ooh, purty...

Via Gene Expression and The Genius, two nice visualisations: one computer rendered and the other obtained through traditional microscopy.

The computer rendered one is this animated tour of RNA interference at Nature. Let me say first that I think it's very cool, it looks great, kudos to Arkitek Studios (who made it). However, like most computer renderings of cell nuclei this one is faintly reminiscent of a space battle (I'm sure that I've seen that RNAi silencing complex model before on Babylon 5). And who knew that Pacman spends his spare time disposing of aberrant mRNA?

The second one is of the H5N1 strain of the avian flu virus, taken by Swedish science photographer Lennart Nilsson. Apparently the blue balls are the virus attacking heathly pink cells. High resolution versions are available at Dagens Nyhete. I don't know what the yellow thing in the right hand photograph is: maybe it's Pacman again, in dire straits.