A study published in the online journal PLoS Currents, Daniel Perez, PhD and his team at the University of Maryland show that the novel H1N1 virus grows much faster than seasonal flu viruses and is thus less likely to exchange genetic material with them.
There have been reports speculating on the possibility that the new pandemic H1N1 strain may become more virulent and/or more transmissible if it were to reassort with seasonal influenza strains.
Perez and his team grew the virus in ferrets and co-infected the animals with the pandemic H1N1 virus with one of two seasonal flu viruses circulating now (a different H1N1 virus or an H3N2 virus). The animals were sickened by both the viruses, but only the swine flu virus went on to infect other ferrets.
Ferrets, whose respiratory systems are similar to humans, were used because they are a well-established model for human influenza infection, pathogenesis and transmission.
Comments
Very interesting! I suppose that in order to definitely claim that there was no reassortment of genetic materials between the two strains they need to sequence the complete genome of the dominant swine flu that sickened other animals and compare it to the parental strains.
Very interesting! I suppose that in order to definitely claim that there was no reassortment of genetic materials between the two strains they need to sequence the complete genome of the dominant swine flu that sickened other animals and compare it to the parental strains.
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