Comments on: What if influenza virus did not reassort?

By: profvrr

profvrr — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 06:22:27 +0000

Yes, you can visualize all the viral RNA segments by gel
electrophoresis. Occasionally two segments may co-migrate but they can
be separated using different running conditions.

By: Katina

Katina — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 03:53:22 +0000

Gell electrophoresis of segmented viruses (ROBA) the appearence of segments on gell, do they correlate to the number of viral segments? ex. Reovirus 12 seg Orthomyxo 10

By: profvrr

profvrr — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 23:22:27 +0000

Yes, you can visualize all the viral RNA segments by gel
electrophoresis. Occasionally two segments may co-migrate but they can
be separated using different running conditions.

By: Katina

Katina — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:53:22 +0000

Gell electrophoresis of segmented viruses (ROBA) the appearence of segments on gell, do they correlate to the number of viral segments? ex. Reovirus 12 seg Orthomyxo 10

By: MicrobiologyBytes » Blog Archive » Rewiring influenza

MicrobiologyBytes » Blog Archive » Rewiring influenza — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 08:01:45 +0000

[...] a nice discussion of why this isn’t the answer to influenza pandemics, read What if influenza virus did not reassort? at the Virology [...]

By: ciak

ciak — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 05:17:44 +0000

Hi Vincent
Thank you for the very interesting article. I have two questions for you regarding swine flue.

1) Vaccination: the authorities in Europe are already starting vaccinating pregnant women. Is the vaccine reliable? do you think enough tests have been done? (I read that in case of pandemy the approval process, given the emergency, takes much less time. ie in Denmark only 120 pregnant women have been tested....). Given the current situation, would you reccomand the vaccination to your wife if pregnant?
2) The virus is supposed to be very contagious far more than than the "normal" one. That said why just few hundred thousand cases came out in Europe and in the US? also in countries hit hard during the fall as Argentina, only 1 ml people got infected (less than 5% of the population). If math is not an opinion something does not fit statistically here.

Thank you for your attention and for the very good blog. Ciak

By: gsgs

gsgs — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:31:04 +0000

if influenza would reassort as much a in birds, shouldn't it become
as mild as it is in birds too ?
Flu is trying to spread better but this seems to coincide with
less virulence.

So, here is another idea: create new flu-viruses by enhanced artificial
evolution including artificial recombination and enhanced mixing (reassortment)
of different strains in some closed environment (swine ?)

try to produce viruses which spread better in the wild and are less virulent
so to out-compete existing strains (which aren't capable of that enhanced
mixing)