Stickiness may determine how influenza spreads

Influenza viruses have an enormous impact in the U.S., with an estimated 25 million illnesses and 18,000 deaths in the 2022-23 flu season alone. However, the majority of virus particles are not infectious or are only partially infectious. How, then, do they become such a contagious and deadly virus? Michael Vahey, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, plans to investigate how two proteins on the surface of influenza virus influence how many viruses enter a cell and how infection spreads with a nearly $2 million five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A viral particle cannot spread infection on its own — it must be absorbed by a cell where it can begin replicating and making copies of the viral genome and proteins. When two or more viruses enter into the same cell, they can sometimes work together...