Mutations behind flu spread revealed

Noticias de biología
At a Royal Society meeting in London about H5N1 research yesterday, the thus-far silent scientist spoke openly about his results after the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), an independent advisory group to the US government, unanimously voted last week that Kawaoka’s paper should be published in full. Nature intends to “proceed with publication as soon as possible”.
His experiments began when he tweaked the H5N1 virus to reproduce in a ferret’s airways. He introduced random alterations into its haemagglutinin (HA) protein, which it uses to stick to host cells. From the resulting library of mutants, he isolated viruses with two mutations in HA — N224K and Q226L — that could stick to receptors in human tracheal cells. That is something H5N1 viruses cannot usually do....

Nature H5N1