Video transcript of presentation from the NIH/NIAID 3D Printing and Biovisualization team for the 2021 Take Your Child to Work Day virtual event hosted by the NIH Office of Research Services. 


Hi everyone, I am Dr. Meghan McCarthy, and I lead the 3D Printing and Biovisualization Program at the NIAID, where we provide resources and services for 3D printing and virtual and augmented reality.
Our program is part of the Office of Cyber Infrastructure and Computational Biology. Cyber Infrastructure is all of the computer hardware, networking, and technical support for the thousands of researchers and staff at NIAID.
Computational Biology is a field in science that us advanced computer-based methods, like artificial intelligence and machine learning, or simulations, to analyze data, like gene sequences or images from medical scans.
In our program, we to take that data and put into an interesting picture or a three-dimensional model that helps scientists, and the rest of us, to better understand things like molecules and viruses and bacteria, or even human anatomy and disease.
I’m excited to tell you about an app we made called PathogenAR – Pathogens refers to the germs, like viruses or bacteria, that cause infections. “AR” is shorthand for augmented reality. AR puts digital information in front of a view of the real world, using a camera on a computer, a phone, a tablet, or a wearable headset or glasses.
With PathogenAR, we’ve provided a way for you to interact with viruses and molecules in AR, to learn about flu vaccines, the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, and there’s even a lesson where you can do a virtual COVID-19 nasal swab.
The free app works with an Apple or Android smartphone or tablet. You don’t need anything else but your device, however PathogenAR has a feature to move the models around with this Merge Cube, if you have one at home, or you can make one with a paper print out, but it is not required.
Another we use the 3D models is to turn them into actual objects, using a 3D printer. In fact, we have a whole website with thousands of 3D files that you can download and make with a 3D printer. It’s called the NIH 3D Print Exchange. People from all over the world are using it to share 3D-printable models and use our free web tools to create 3D models of molecules, and you could try that out as well. Much of our work last year was focused on helping people share and print face shields and other needed equipment to support covid-19 pandemic, including this 3D printable face mask
Along with this video, you will find links to everything I’ve mentioned here and some other very cool activities that you can do at home, like molecular “origami.” It is all fun and interactive, but I promise you will also learn some science along the way.
Last but certainly not least is our use of virtual reality technology to go inside the models and other kinds of 3D data. Since we are virtual this year, we can’t bring you into our BioViz Lab to experience that yourself, but my colleague, Dr. Phil Cruz is going to give you a demonstration of how we use that. 
Hi, my name is Dr. Phillip Cruz, you can call me Phil, and I’m part of the NIAID 3D visualization program. I’m a computational structural biologist, and what that means is that I use computers to study the structures of biological molecules, like proteins and DNA. This is important because with biology, structure is function.  
Computers not only let us view the structures that have been measured experimentally, they also let us predict the structures these molecules will assume and how they change over time. Most of the processes used by biology are driven by changes to the structures of these molecules.
Augmented reality and virtual reality are exciting new ways that we have to visualize biology with the help of a computer. I’m now going to use VR to examine the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2, and then go inside it. So let’s have a look.
The spike protein gets its name because it projects outward from the surface of the virus. Because of this, it is also the first thing your body’s immune system sees when it encounters a virus, and it is the basis for vaccines that are now available to prevent COVID-19.
As you can see here by the 3 colors, it has 3 identical chains.  But if you look closely, you can see that the top of the purple chain has flipped up. In fact, this part in all the chains is constantly flipping up and down. When down, it hides the virus from your body’s immune system, but when it occasionally flips up this piece can now attach the virus to receptor proteins on your body’s cells. This starts the process of the spike pulling the virus and the host cell together, eventually merging the virus with the host cell and starting the infection.  
And now I encourage you to learn more about this yourself in augmented reality using the NIAID Pathogen AR app.