Bird Flu Mutations Revealed

One of the researchers who created a highly transmissible form of the bird flu virus has broken his silence and shared which mutations made it possible.

Written byBob Grant

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Colorized transmission electron micrograph of Avian influenza A H5N1 viruses (seen in gold) grown in MDCK cells (seen in green). WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, CDC

Speaking at a meeting of the Royal Society in London on Tuesday (April 3), one of the scientists whose research resulted in an H5N1 virus that could spread easily between ferrets has revealed the details of how he did it. University of Wisconsin, Madison, virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka told about 150 attendees of the 2-day meeting that 4 mutations and genes from the H1N1 virus appeared to make the bird flu virus strain readily transmissible between ferrets in his lab.

Kawaoka's revelations, which came on the heels of last Friday's National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity recommendation that his paper be published in full, detailed his methodology. First, he introduced two mutations—N224K and Q226L—into the haemagglutinin (HA) protein of H5N1 that made the virus capable of ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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