Reconstruction of the 1918 Influenza Virus: Unexpected Rewards from the Past
See on Scoop.it – Virology and Bioinformatics from Virology.ca
The influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 killed approximately 50 million people. The unusually severe morbidity and mortality associated with the pandemic spurred physicians and scientists to isolate the etiologic agent, but the virus was not isolated in 1918. In 1996, it became possible to recover and sequence highly degraded fragments of influenza viral RNA retained in preserved tissues from several 1918 victims.
An update….
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