The 1918 flu virus is resurrected.

Virology Select

Viruses are the scourge of mankind, causing devastating pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish flu and AIDS. This Virology Select highlights new studies that shed light on how viruses invade host cells so efficiently and how they evade the host immune response by stowing away in immune cells or by constantly changing their surface armor. The opening decade of the 21 st century witnessed the first f...

Virology. Resurrected influenza virus yields secrets of deadly 1918 pandemic.

Canine Influenza Virus (CIV)

As early as the 1920s influenza was shown to be caused by a virus. There are however, three genetically very distinct types of influenza viruses: Influenza A Virus: This is by far the most pathogenic type and is responsible for pandemics such as the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918, Asian flu in 1957, Hong Kong flu in 1968 and the Swine flu in 2009 that was caused by the mysterious re-emergence of ...

Structural basis of preexisting immunity to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza virus.

The 2009 H1N1 swine flu is the first influenza pandemic in decades. The crystal structure of the hemagglutinin from the A/California/04/2009 H1N1 virus shows that its antigenic structure, particularly within the Sa antigenic site, is extremely similar to those of human H1N1 viruses circulating early in the 20th century. The cocrystal structure of the 1918 hemagglutinin with 2D1, an antibody fro...

Questioning the evidence for genetic recombination in the 1918 "Spanish flu" virus.

Genetic Recombination in the 1918 “Spanish Flu” Virus Influenza viral sequences have been obtained from preserved tissues of victims of the “Spanish flu” pandemic that killed over 20 million people from 1918 to 1919 (1, 2). Phylogenetic analysis of hemagglutinin (HA) gene sequences has indicated that the 1918 Spanish flu virus was more closely related to the human lineage than to the swine or a...