Mutant-flu paper published

摘要

Avian H5N1 influenza viruses in the wild may be one small step away from spreading effectively between mammals. That is the sobering message from a controversial study by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published online by Nature1 after months of debate about how to release the findings publicly."After wanting to read it for so long, it was like eating again after fasting," says Vincent Racaniello, a virologist at Columbia University in New York. "And it does not disappoint." H5N1, commonly known as bird flu, is highly pathogenic and often lethal in humans, but it cannot spread efficiently between people and cases seem to be rare.