Understanding Flu Virus Transformation Is Key to Future Vaccines
Every year, the influenza flu virus evolves, leaving the strains to escape the radicals our immune systems generated in response to disease or disease. Every year, scientists develop new flu vaccines to protect us from the strains.
Scientists continue to examine how the virus operates to help end this match of cat-and-mouse. Recent research might help the development of effective vaccines, in addition to anti-inflammatory drugs to treat infection -- and shed light on the inner workings of the flu.
A key thing for the virus to infect is the ability to duplicate itself. The virus does so with the support 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 laboratory environment. This enabled the scientists to utilize an imaging technique called electron microscopy to get a close-up look. These structural and functional insights may offer new targets.
Another study, from researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, has uncovered a surprising flu mutation which allows the virus to infect cells.
Ordinarily, a protein called hemagglutinin lets flu viruses attach to cells, along with a protein called neuraminidase lets replicated viruses escape from cells and go on to infect others. The Seattle researchers disabled the gene which produces hemagglutinin to see whether the viruses could evolve a means that was different to attach to cells. After several generations, they did. The scientists discovered a flu virus with a neuraminidase that permits the virus to attach to host cells if the binding of hemagglutinin is blocked.
The researchers found the same mutation occurring naturally in strains from several flu outbreaks. These results suggest a risk that influenza vaccines may need to target these mutations, and that flu viruses with mutations that are such may have the ability to escape antibodies that block the binding of hemagglutinin.
