US scientists resurrect deadly 1918 flu

US scientists resurrect deadly 1918 flu

NewScientist.com news service
Debora MacKenzie

In a surprise announcement, scientists in the US say they have recreated the influenza virus that killed at least 50 million people in 1918, and they have infected mice with it.

They say the need to understand how flu viruses cause lethal pandemics outweighs any safety risks. But the risks may not be negligible.

By painstakingly piecing together viral fragments from hospital specimens and a victim buried in Alaskan permafrost, Jeff Taubenberger and colleagues at the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland, have now sequenced all eight coding regions of the 1918 flu virus’s genome. They published the last three - coding for the polymerase complex that allows the virus to replicate - on Wednesday (Nature DOI: 10.1038/nature04230).

Meanwhile, Terrence Tumpey at the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and colleagues used the sequences to rebuild the virus itself, and infect mice with it. They report this week that unlike other flu viruses, 1918 does not need a protein-splitting enzyme from its surroundings to replicate, instead using some hitherto-unknown mechanism. And as in 1918, it rapidly destroys lungs (Science, vol 310, p 77).

I realize that someone needs to reconstitute this virus in order to make a vaccine. If we don’t then someone else will and it might be used as a weapon of mass destruction. All I can say is this is scary stuff.

They say it is safe but you never know. Here is an article about a plane carrying viruses that crashed. Plane Carrying Viruses Crashes in Canada.