Influenza infects cells in a newly discovered way

Scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have uncovered a new mechanism by which influenza can infect cells, a finding that ultimately may have implications for immunity against the flu. The paper is published in the Journal of Virology and written by Jesse Bloom, Ph.D., an evolutionary biologist and assistant member of the Fred Hutch Basic Sciences Division, and Kathryn Hooper, a graduate research assistant in the Bloom Lab. “We expected that viruses with the mutated hemagglutinin wouldn't be able to infect cells”, said Bloom, who also is a computational biologist and an assistant member of the Fred Hutch Public Health Sciences Division. “So we were surprised when a virus with this hemagglutinin started to grow. We were even more surprised when we sequenced the virus and discovered that it had evolved a mutation in neuraminidase”. “This was not a mutation we expected to find in the lab, let alone in viruses that have infected humans over the past few years”, Hooper said. “It suggests there is influenza circulating in nature that may be infecting cells by a mechanism that has been overlooked by others in the field”.