WIKIMEDIA, DANIEL HALLMixing the highly pathogenic bird flu virus H5N1 with a highly transmissible human flu virus results in hybrid viruses that are both pathogenic and transmissible in mammals, according to a report published online today (May 2) in Science. The findings suggest that such hybrid viruses, called reassortants, could emerge naturally in agricultural settings where birds and humans interact.
“I think what we can safely say is that these viruses are really well primed for reassortment,” said Andrew Mehle, a professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who was not involved in the work. “[The paper] does raise alarm that [reassortment] is no longer a theorectical. . . . If we did it in a lab, nature can do it probably better,” he said.
Indeed reassortment—the recombining of virus genes—is a natural process that can occur when two related virus strains are present in the same cell at the same time. Although reassortment between H5N1 and the human-infecting H1N1 virus has not knowingly occurred, as yet, both viruses have been isolated from pigs, suggesting that winding up in ...
