Richard Webby and Edward Hutchinson discuss influenza viruses—the development of new strains, how they mediate virulence, and their threat to human society.

Influenza RNA sequences from three sets of lungs preserved in formalin since 1918 provide new insights into the deadly pandemic.

Paul Thomas from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital will discuss how he used single cell and spatial transcriptomics to discover the underlying mechanism of an inflammatory immune response in the lungs.

Although scientists debate the ethics of deliberately infecting volunteers with SARS-CoV-2, plenty of consenting participants have been exposed to all sorts of pathogens in prior trials.

Lab and field experiments indicate that aquatic environments could act as reservoirs for the pathogens, which typically do not represent a direct risk to humans.

Electron microscopy revealed that a deadly disease of birds was not a form of flu, but a different type of virus entirely.

A new study demonstrates that some viruses can be transmitted on airborne particles other than those produced by talking, coughing, or sneezing.

As we struggle through the COVID-19 pandemic, we can still learn lessons from a scourge that plagued our ancestors more than a century ago.

A handful of factors tip the scales in making a virus more likely to trigger a disruptive global outbreak. Right now, scientists tend to rank influenza, coronaviruses, and Nipah virus as the biggest threats.

A coronavirus has been commanding the headlines for months, but strains of influenza and paramyxovirus are extremely dangerous pathogens that could spark outbreaks.

Although modern society seems to be unwilling or unable to learn from the past, doing so just might hold the key to envisioning a brighter future.

Modelers try a new approach to gauge the true number of COVID-19 cases in the US by using surveillance data for flu-like illnesses.

An influenza virus identified in pigs in China has a concerning mix of genes, but experts say there is no way to know if it will evolve to be transmissible between humans.

Microbiologist Maurice Hilleman foresaw the global spread of a novel influenza strain in 1957. His vaccine saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Drugs targeting patients’ immune systems, rather than the virus itself, could be key to recovery from severe cases of the disease, some researchers suggest.

By studying influenza in mice and cells, researchers identify a glucose metabolism pathway critical to the dysregulated immune response that kills many infectious disease patients, including those with COVID-19.

The host transcriptional signature elicited by the coronavirus appears to be less robust and lacks the induction of key antiviral genes.

Random mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen’s genome help researchers track the spread and transmission of COVID-19, the disease it causes.

Roughly a quarter of 38 viral samples from people treated with Xofluza had mutations in their genomes that made the pathogens less susceptible to the drug.