Monday, November 25, 2013

Seasonal flu escapes immunity with single amino acid substitutions

Scientists have identified a potential way to improve future flu vaccines after discovering that seasonal flu typically escapes immunity from vaccines with as little as a single amino acid substitution. Additionally, they found these single amino acid changes occur at only seven places on its surface - not the 130 places previously believed. The research was published in the journal Science."This work is a major step forward in our understanding of the evolution of flu viruses, and could possibly enable us to predict that evolution.

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