What is it about?
When viruses invade the human body, part of the response is the production of antibodies that target the virus. By growing influenza viruses in the lab, in the presence of antibodies, we observe the way the viruses mutate to evade the antibodies. During our analysis we observed that two different influenza viruses seemed limited in the way they could mutate.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Limits on viral mutation is like limited hiding places in a game of hide and seek. By understanding the limits on viral mutation it is easier to find weaknesses that we can exploit.
Perspectives
This work led to other discoveries about codon pairs in both viral genomes and host genomes. It was really exciting to uncover patterns that other people (or computers) hadn't already discovered. The patterns in codon pairs help us understand how genomic sequence (which describes what an organism needs) is used to actually create the proteins (which are the physical representation of organisms).
Ewan Plant
US Food & Drug Administration
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Insights from the comparison of genomic variants from two influenza B viruses grown in the presence of human antibodies in cell culture, PLOS One, September 2020, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239015.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
