With just 141 confirmed deaths so far, an interesting question is whether the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus could mutate into something more lethal (“How a Mild Virus Might Turn Vicious“). Of course it could – but is it beneficial for the virus? A fundamental principle of viral evolution is that viruses must spread from host …
Virulence: A positive or negative trait for evolution? Read More »
The World Health Organization, whose duties include directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system, will soon be writing science textbooks. That statement isn’t true, of course. But it was my reaction to reading the latest announcement from Geneva: Bowing to pressure, the World Health Organization announced Friday that it would rewrite its rules for …
On episode #32 of the podcast This Week in Virology, Vincent, Alan, and Raul Rabadan converse about polio survivors in iron lungs, bocavirus, structure of mimivirus, and genome sequence analysis of influenza H1N1 viruses. [powerpress url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV032.mp3″] Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV #32 or subscribe in iTunes or by email.
The influenza H1N1 outbreak in Mexico has been analyzed to provide information on the pandemic potential of the new virus strain. The estimates offer some insight into the transmissibility and severity of the virus but must be tempered with the understanding that there are still uncertainties about all aspects of the outbreak. Influenza incidence is …
Influenza A/Mexico/2009 (H1N1) virulence and transmission Read More »
Peter Palese has written an excellent opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on why swine flu is not that scary. His arguments may bring some comfort for those readers of virology blog who are worried about the impact of the new influenza H1N1 strain. Even if you are not worried, the scientific basis for …
Let’s resume our discussion of the influenza virus genome. Last time we established that there are eight negative-stranded RNAs within the influenza virion, each coding for one or two proteins. Now we’ll consider how proteins are made from these RNAs. Figure 1 shows influenza RNA segment 2, which encodes two proteins: PB1 and PB1-F2. The …
