Understanding flu virus mutations is key to vaccine progress

Every year, the influenza virus evolves, allowing the resulting strains to escape the flu-fighting antibodies our immune systems produced in response to previous vaccination or infection. So every year, scientists develop new seasonal flu vaccines to protect us from the circulating strains. To help end this game of cat-and-mouse, researchers continue to study how the virus operates. Recent studies, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, shed light on the inner workings of the flu — and might aid the development of more effective vaccines, as well as antiviral drugs to treat infection. A key step in the flu’s ability to infect is its ability to replicate, or copy itself. The virus does this with the help of complexes called ribonucleoproteins. For the first time, researchers at the Scripps Research Institute were able to coax the complexes to assemble themselves in the lab environment. This allowed the scientists to use...