Scientists Determine Structure of 1918 Flu Virus

Elusive_Cure writes "NIMR scientists have solved an 85-year old riddle by determining the structure of the flu virus which jumped from birds to humans in 1918 killing more than 20 million people worldwide. This is the same virus that took more lives than World War I and became the largest and deadliest influenza outbreak in recorded history."

Comments

Just the Receptor

[stevesliva]

I know nothing about microbiology, yet I know from NPR that only the structure of the receptor has been determined, not the entire gene sequence of the virus. Granted, I'm not sure if the receptor is what made it so virulent and deadly, but the rest of the virus is still unknown.

Re:I thought it was caused more by social conditio

[isn't my name]

I thought it was caused more by social conditions postwar, rather than any inherent lethality

Actually, no. It was a particularly deadly virus that actually hit the adult population harder than children, unlike most influenza strains. The fact that there were troops being transported all over and then returning home probably helped to speed its spread, but given what I've read about it, a modern city today would be hit pretty hard by the 1918 flu.

Re:What Sample?

[Randym]

...biopsies from soldiers who died from influenza in 1918 were preserved and maintained in the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Another sample was taken from an Inuit woman who had succumbed to the infection and had been buried in the Alaskan permafrost. Together, these samples yielded a number of pieces of RNA from the virus. A few years ago, Taubenberger and his colleagues at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology were able to piece together enough fragments to reconstruct the sequence of the gene that coded for the viral protein hemagglutinin. These are the oldest viral sequences that have been reconstructed to date. Then Basler and Palese at Mount Sinai Institute of Medicine in New York managed to construct an expression system that allowed them to make the hemagglutinin protein. Finally, Wilson and Stevens developed their own systems and made enough of the protein to crystallize and solve the structure using x-ray crystallography.

Gee, Waldoj, perhaps you should RTA (the second link, to the Scripps Institute). In fact *some* of the RNA *did* come from an Arctic tundra burial. But the final protein analysis was somewhat more complex.

PS: Thanks for mentioning this book. I'm jotting it down and am going to search it out.