A team at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, lead by Jeffery K. Taubenberger, has reconstructed the Spanish flu virus that caused the 1918 pandemic:
The comparison of the old and new influenza viruses is the first practical use of an extraordinary accomplishment whose completion was announced today in two papers, one published in the journal Science and the other in its chief competitor, Nature.
After 10 years of work, Taubenberger and his team reported they had successfully reconstructed the Spanish flu virus, responsible for the deadliest epidemic since the Black Death of the Middle Ages. “Reborn” in mid-August at a high-security laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the pathogen has already been shown in animal experiments to be just as lethal as it was out in the world 87 years ago.
This result is a very big deal:
“It is an amazing feat,” said Edwin D. Kilbourne, 85, one of the country’s leading influenza virologists and a retired professor from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and New York Medical College. “It’s a tribute to imagination, perseverance, and a great deal of very hard work.”
Far from being an elaborate scientific parlor trick, the reconstruction of the 1918 virus is expected to provide insights that are immediately useful to the virologists and epidemiologists charting the flow of hundreds of flu strains through dozens of species.
“I think we have been able to unmask the 1918 virus, and it is revealing some of the secrets that will help us prepare for the next pandemic,” said Julie L. Gerberding, director of the CDC.
By identifying how the Spanish flu virus differs genetically from related flu viruses that don’t infect people, researchers hope to identify the mutations that are necessary for adaptation to a human host. Taubenberger estimates, as a rough guess, there may be 25.
Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds.
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