viruses have a history...

[undergroundpanther]

Scientists Describe How 1918 Influenza Virus Sample Was Exhumed In Alaska

ScienceDaily (July 4, 2007) — The effort to find preserved samples of the 1918 influenza virus has been a pursuit of both historical and medical importance. The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most devastating single disease outbreak in modern history, and examining the virus that caused it may help prepare for, and possibly prevent, future pandemics. When the complete sequence of the 1918 virus was published in 2005, it represented a watershed event for influenza researchers worldwide.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070702145610.htm


Recently, scientists were able to remake 1918 flu using a technique called reverse genetics. They started by making DNA copies of the virus genome segments because DNA is easier to manipulate in the lab than RNA. Each of those copies was then placed into a larger piece of circular DNA called a plasmid. Those eight DNA circles are then put into an animal cell. The animal cell produces the proteins that correspond to the 8 segments which then form the flu virus. The technique also allows scientists to selectively manipulate individual parts of the virus when doing experiments.

Mechanism: Flu strains are named for the H and N proteins, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, which stick out from the surface of the virus like spikes. These protein spikes allow influenza to infect and damage cells and are what the immune system recognizes. The hemagglutinin spike allows the virus to bind to and enter cells. After co-opting the cells molecular machinery to produce more viruses, the neuraminidase spike is used to escape the cell, destroying it in the process. The 1918 influenza is an H1N1 strain and research on the reconstituted virus shows that it was particularly infective and had the unusual property of being able to infect mice, which typical human influenza strains cannot.

http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/bio/factsheets/H1N1factsheet.html


Emergence of a Virus

Simultaneous Appearance in Humans and Swine (1918)

Before 1918, influenza in humans was well known, but the disease had never been described in pigs.3 For pig farmers in Iowa, everything changed after the Cedar Rapids Swine Show, which was held from September 30 to October 5 of that year.4 Just as the 1918 pandemic spread the human influenza A (H1N1) virus worldwide and killed 40 million to 50 million people, herds of swine were hit with a respiratory illness that closely resembled the clinical syndrome affecting humans. Similarities in the clinical presentations and pathologic features of influenza in humans and swine suggested that pandemic human influenza in 1918 was actually adapted to the pig, and the search for the causative agent began.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMra0904322

Why were the viral genomes of the 1977 H1N1 isolate and the 1950 virus so similar? If the H1N1 viruses had been replicating in an animal host for 27 years, far more genetic differences would have been identified. The authors suggested several possibilities, but only one is compelling:

…it is possible that the 1950 H1N1 influenza virus was truly frozen in nature or elsewhere and that such a strain was only recently introduced into man.

The suggestion is clear: the virus was frozen in a laboratory freezer since 1950, and was released, either by intent or accident, in 1977. This possibility has been denied by Chinese and Russian scientists, but remains to this day the only scientifically plausible explanation.

http://www.virology.ws/2009/03/02/origin-of-current-influenza-h1n1-virus/

[alittlelark]

1. Scary stuff.

We will likely kill ourselves off w/in a few hundred years.

The lizard people will finally get the planet to themselves.

[The Straight Story]

2. The lizard people will have to fight the greys for it

:rofl: