Jurassic Flu
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Why would we want to re-create an extinct flu virus? Is it safe?
The 1918 flu virus seemed to arise suddenly, caused very severe symptoms, and spread between people more effectively than many other strains. Since the disease outbreak spread around the world, it was saidto be a ‘pandemic.’
Bringing the 1918 Flu Back to Life
There is growing concern that the ‘bird flu’ could cause the next pandemic if it develops the ability to spread quickly between humans. Researchers working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta decided to bring the 1918 flu ‘back to life’ in order to learn how the 1918 virus differed from ‘modern’ strains, so that they can create new treatment strategies to avoid or deal with future influenza outbreaks.
Despite the potential benefits of this research, some people feel that the recreation of the 1918 strain is too dangerous. Any accidental release of the 1918 virus could be devastating, as it could initiate another pandemic.
Current flu vaccines have been shown to be partly effective when tested in mice infected with flu viruses containing some genes from the 1918 strain, and for security all work on the virus is being done in enhanced biosafety level-3 conditions. These conditions require workers to wear respirators and shower before leaving the lab, so the risks of a viral ‘escape’ are relatively low.
The Great Pandemic … Same Time, Next Century?
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Even before then, in 1950, a young pathologist in Iowa named Johan V. Hultin overheard a colleague say that the only way to find the 1918 virus would be in the bodies of victims who were buried in ice -- "permafrost" that had never thawed since 1918. Using church records, Hultin identified possible flu victims in Alaskan villages and won permission to exhume bodies. He and his colleagues dug down in the ice and discovered perfectly frozen bodies -- but to his dismay, Hultin did not have the sophisticated scientific tools necessary to identify the virus.
Fast-forward the story to 1997. Retired and living in San Francisco, Hultin read a scientific-journal article by Taubenberger and began to speculate that molecular biology had advanced to the point that it might be able to identify the virus -- if they went back to the permafrost and dug up more frozen victims of the flu. Again, he asked permission to dig. Hultin found the body of an obese woman who was particularly well preserved. He removed her lungs -- and they had the virus. Taubenberger's lab is using the samples to analyze the genetic puzzle of this deadly virus.
Characterization of the reconstructed 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic virus.
Tumpey TM, Basler CF, Aguilar PV, Zeng H, Solórzano A, Swayne DE, Cox NJ, Katz JM, Taubenberger JK, Palese P, García-Sastre A.
Influenza Branch, Mailstop G-16,
Division of Viral and Rickettsial Diseases (DVRD),
National Center for Infectious Diseases,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
1600 Clifton Road, NE, Atlanta, GA 30333, USA. tft9@cdc.gov
The pandemic influenza virus of 1918-1919 killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people worldwide. With the recent availability of the complete 1918 influenza virus coding sequence, we used reverse genetics to generate an influenza virus bearing all eight gene segments of the pandemic virus to study the properties associated with its extraordinary virulence.
In stark contrast to contemporary human influenza H1N1 viruses, the 1918 pandemic virus had the ability to replicate in the absence of trypsin, caused death in mice and embryonated chicken eggs, and displayed a high-growth phenotype in human bronchial epithelial cells. Moreover, the coordinated expression of the 1918 virus genes most certainly confers the unique high-virulence phenotype observed with this pandemic virus.
Concern as revived 1918 flu virus kills monkeys
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A team at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine has already started to investigate. Peter Palese is working with Adolfo Garcia-Sastre and Jeffery Taubenberger, who first reconstructed the virus, to find out how it spreads. Working with ferrets, they have found that a change of only one or two amino acids in the flu sequence is enough to stop transmission. They will publish the result in Science.
Identifying which sections of the genome are responsible for transmission "has huge predictive value for whether strains will become pandemic or not", says Guus Rimmelzwaan at the World Health Organization's National Influenza Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The next move for Kawaoka's team is along similar lines — they will be swapping sections in and out of the virus to establish exactly which bits make it so lethal.
But the latest results haven't assuaged everyone's concerns. Richard Ebright, a bacteriologist at Rutgers University, New Jersey, believes the virus should never have been recreated. "The key implication is that the material is now present in at least two locations," he says. The new study, he argues, increases the risk that the virus could escape and sets "a dangerous precedent" for other labs to follow.
Gene from 1918 virus proves key to virulent influenza
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"Replacing only one gene is sufficient to make the virus more pathogenic," says Kawaoka, a professor of pathobiological sciences at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. In the Nature paper, Kawaoka and his colleagues describe how a Spanish flu gene that codes for a key protein changed a relatively benign strain of flu virus from a nuisance to a highly virulent form.
