There will be more information at
recombinomics.com
soon, but here is some background.
The recombination mention in the article you posted is really re-assortment. Influenza has 8 genes and each strand of RNA is separate, so if the same cell gets infected with two different flu viruses, the 8 pieces of RNA can get mixed and the resulting virus can have one gene from one virus and another from another.
This can be seen easily by looking at the serotypes of the various isolates. There are 15 serotypes for H (one of the 8 genes) and 9 for N (another of the 8 genes). The virus causing the problem in Asia is H5N1, while one common human virus is H1N1, so both viruses have the same N (although the sequence of the two N's is slightly different).
The reason for the differences in the H1's is recombination, which is essentially ignored by scientists studying influenza! When there is a dual infection, as the virus copies gene 1 from virus 1, the polymerase can hop off one strand and start on another (it called a copy choice mechanism). This is what causes the real problem, because the recombinant is different than both parents (like a child is different than a parent, although that is again reassortment, not recombination). With recombination, the change is within the gene.
Most scientists think that the virus is mutating, but it is really just recycling and mixing old mutations via recombination.
All viruses do this. It is the real driver of viral evolution and I'll predict a new field of study will emerge and it will be called recombinomics. |
