>>Why do they need to do it?<<
There are some reasons for doing, especially if the experiment is done correctly. However, I don't think it will be, and consequently there will be no pandemic strain, just a lot of head scratching followed by hand waving, which is essentially what is happening now.
The experiment is designed to eliminate the head scratching and hand waving. It won't, but it may lead to the correct experiment, which would prove that pandemic strains evolve from recombinantion, not reassortment.
Right now the experiments are designed to see what combination of reassorted genes lead to a pandemic strain, so they will simply be reshuffling genes.
The virus however takes advantage of reshuffled genes to make new genes, but it changes all 8 genes and then uses some natural selection to come up with the best combination.
My guess is the experiment will only do one gene at a time and won't allow for recombination, so it will just be garbage in, garbage out because the experiment is fundamentally flawed.
In science (and just about everything), you have to ask the right question to get the right answer, and as far as I can tell, these experiments are asking the wrong question. They are asking what combination of old genes makes a pandemic strain, instead of what new genes are formed.
The virus clearly focuses on making new genes, which is why you need a new flu shot each year. But this is explained with hand waving (mutations due to copy errors), which is clearly wrong. |
