50-Year-Old Flu Virus Model Gets Facelift

50-Year-Old Flu Virus Model Revamped, Revealing Pandemic Prediction Possibilities
PITTSBURGH, July 13, 2017 – 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.

“Although influenza has plagued mankind for hundreds of years and poses a substantial public health threat every winter, we know surprisingly little about flu pandemics,” said senior author Seema S. Lakdawala, Ph.D., assistant professor in Pitt’s Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics. “Our discovery may give insight into how the flu virus continually evolves, opening the door to better vaccines and antivirals.”

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 segments bound by a protective nucleoprotein. All eight RNA segments must come together inside a virus particle to be fully infectious.

The classic model of the flu virus has these proteins coating the RNA like beads evenly spaced along a string. However, limitations of techniques used in the 1970s when the model was developed meant that unique features—like exposed RNA loops—were lost. Consequently, the universal depiction of influenza in textbooks is of a uniform random binding of proteins along the ...

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