Biophysics in Africa: Solving the molecular structure of African horse sickness virus VP2

African horse sickness virus (AHSV) is one of the most lethal viruses known to infect horses. Reverse genetics has been used in vaccine research and with the aid of structural insights, could further improve AHSV vaccines. With the structure of bluetongue virus being known, many of the structural AHSV proteins can be modelled with homology modelling. VP2, the receptor binding protein, is an exception, however. Previous whole virus CryoEM work revealed overall AHSV structure, but only up to 14 Å resolution. In order to model AHSV VP2, a combination of deep learning based protein folding and CryoEM was used to resolve the structure for the majority of recombinant AHSV VP2 up to 4 Å resolution.