50-year-old flu virus model revamped, revealing pandemic prediction possibilities

The scientific textbook depiction of the flu virus is about to get a facelift, due to a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine team’s discovery that a model of the influenza genome architecture untouched since the 1970s isn’t so perfect after all. The discovery, reported online and in a coming print issue of the journal Nucleic Acids Research, reveals loopholes in the way the virus packages its genetic material. When one strain of flu co-mingles with another strain inside a cell, these loopholes allow the viruses to swap genetic material and give rise to new strains of flu. Knowing these loopholes and how they interact with each other could give scientists the opportunity to better predict pandemics and find new ways to disrupt the flu virus. Influenza is a type of virus that uses single-stranded ribonucleic acid (RNA) to replicate, instead of double-stranded DNA. Influenza viruses are made up of eight RNA...