8. So, this is what the UK mutation of coronavirus looks like A team of researchers at The University of British Columbia (UBC) led by Dr Sriram Subramaniam, a professor at the university’s department of biochemistry and molecular biology has published the first molecular image of the UK variant of the novel coronavirus, known as B.1.1.7, which also caused a spike in new infections in India. How they did it The research team used a cryo-electron microscope — which can be up to 12 feet tall — to capture the images, taken at near atomic resolution. That’s because the SARS-Cov-2 — the virus that causes Covid-19 — is one lakh times smaller than a pinhead, making it impossible to be detected by a regular light microscope, with the spike proteins even smaller.