Abstract
The 1918 influenza pandemic killed 20 million people, yet the reasons behind the deadly nature of the ‘flu virus have been poorly understood. In 1997, American researchers recovered the first genetic evidence of the virus from old samples and the body of a female disease-victim that had been buried in the Alaskan permafrost. Now, researchers from the Australian National University report that recombination between two influenza strains, one of which was probably a swine strain, took place just before the pandemic: the recombined strain might well have caused the deadly outbreak. Investigators from the University of Wisconsin-Madison propose a different explanation for the virulence of the 1997 Hong Kong chicken-‘flu virus: a single amino acid substitution in this virus is enough to make a non-pathogenic strain highly virulent. Avian cases of the virus continue to resurface at poultry markets in Hong Kong. AVhttp://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-09/nioa-asg083101.php
Published Version
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