Soon after the new influenza H1N1 strain emerged in April 2009, I began a series of blog posts on basic aspects of influenza virus replication and pathogenesis. The goal of this series is to provide information that will allow everyone to better understand the events surrounding emergence and spread of the new pandemic strain. Unfortunately …
The influenza virus hemagglutinin (HA) is the viral protein that attaches to cell receptors. The HA also plays an important role in the release of the viral RNA into the cell, by causing fusion of viral and cellular membranes. HA must be cleaved by cellular proteases to be active as a fusion protein. The HA …
Influenza HA cleavage is required for infectivity Read More »
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, and Eric O. Freed On episode 37 of the podcast “This Week in Virology ” (TWiV), Vincent, Alan, and Eric Freed talk about vesivirus contamination of bioreactors, pandemic influenza, maximizing the effect of vaccination by targeting children, chikungunya virus, and open access scientific journals. [powerpress url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV037.mp3″] Click the arrow above …
One notable characteristic of the four previous influenza pandemics is that they occurred in multiple waves. The 1918 pandemic began with outbreaks of low mortality in the spring and summer, followed by a more lethal wave in the winter. This pattern has fueled speculation that the current H1N1 pandemic strain will undergo mutation that leads …
Readers of virology blog have no doubt seen news reports that a Brazilian influenza isolate called A/Sao Paulo/1454/2009 (H1N1) is novel strain with mutations that enable it to infect new hosts. Here is one example of such a report, from The Australian: Brazilian scientists have identified a new strain of the H1N1 virus after examining …
A network of ~150 laboratories in the United States participate in virological surveillance for influenza. The results of these analyses are publicly available, and provide extremely interesting characterization of the pandemic spread of the new H1N1 strain. During week 22, 6,664 samples were submitted for testing, of which 2,681 were positive for influenza virus. Of …
