Genetic Codes Are Breaking Down The 2009 Swine Flu-H1N1 Origins

Genetic Codes Are Breaking Down The 2009 Swine Flu-H1N1 Origins as investigators trudge through small pig farms and remote villages deep in the interior of Mexico, searching for clues about the new swine flu…the answers about the swine flue or H1N1, it’s’ origin may finally appear on a computer, based on genetic codes. What did we ever do with out the computer?

At the Columbia University in the department of Biomedical Informatics, researchers are using public databases to trace the origins of the 2009 H1N1 virus.

What Have They Found?

Their recent analysis, published in Eurosurveillance, suggests that the virus has at least two swine ancestors, one of them related to a virus isolated in North America in 1998.

Their investigation found that the closest relatives to the new swine flu or H1N1 virus were viruses that were isolated from pigs from the United States.

Raul Rabadan, co-author and assistant professor at Columbia, states that “even though the relatives are distant, and it’s still premature to verify that the virus came from the United States, based on this one analysis.”

He continues with, “Influenza is like a small jigsaw puzzle with eight pieces, each with its own function. The puzzle changes all the time, which is why exposure does not lead to total immunity and vaccines need to be updated yearly.”

How Was The Virus Created?

When two viruses attack and infect the same cell, they can create yet other viruses with pieces of each of the original strains of the viruses. Scientists call this process reassortment. The 2009 H1N1 virus is a reassortment of swine, human and avian genes.

Rabadan and his colleagues are finding the closest ancestors for each of the parts of the virus and then trying to understand how these parts may have combined in the past. This is a complicated question or puzzle to solve. Thank goodness for modern age of computers which can add and retrieve all of this information .

It is impossible to know from the available data where geographically the 2009 H1N1 virus originated, but with more samples, researchers may be able to simulate more clues.

It is not as simple as it sounds, though. Simply by looking at the genetic code, it is still unknown what species is the virus’ host, just how easily it is transmitted and how just how deadly the virus might be.

“We have a set of letters that you can try to map, and then you can try to see how this map is working, how would you know if a particular combination is giving you something? That’s something that has to be solved,” states Rabadan and his colleagues.

Genetic Codes Are Breaking Down The 2009 Swine Flu-H1N1 Origins and although a 5 year old boy in the small village of La Gloria, Mexico, is said to be “patient zero,” with the earliest confirmed case of the swine flu or the 2009 H1N1, no one knows exactly how or where he contracted the virus.

Some say that tracking the origin of the virus isn’t as important as finding ecological weak points and bolstering surveillance.

“We may not be able to say precisely say, ‘This pig farm spawned this virus’ and all that, but I think it’s very important to face the facts about what kinds of ecological settings are spawning danger,” stated Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

For influenza, the new ecological stress points mostly relate to industrial scale livestock and, in the case of avian flu, backyard chicken farming, she said. In both of those cases, there are “economic lives at stake” in making decisions such as killing certain animals, she stated.

“We have to figure out a way we can surveil those populations, surveil that ecology, without the industries at stake, or, in the case of chickens, the small family farmer in Indonesia, feeling that their livelihood is challenged just by the very fact that anybody is even trying to do surveillance,” Garrett stated.

“But the genetic lineage of the virus does offer useful clues. Cooperation among the United States, Canada and Mexico in every step of the investigation has been profound. By contrast, Indonesia has refused to share bird flu samples with the World Health Organization (WHO) in the past,” she stated.

Many researchers say it’s not surprising that a new virus such as the swine flu or the 2009 H1N1 would seem to have its focal point in rural Mexico.

A 2008 Nature study co-written by Peter Daszak, president of Wildlife Trust, an international organization of scientists, used the computer to model where hot spots would be for emerging infectious diseases. Those hot spots were China, Southeast Asia, Mexico, parts of Brazil, Europe and the United States.

The study showed that the hot spots were where socioeconomic, environmental and ecological factors correlate with emerging infectious diseases. This would help identify “hot spots” for where viruses would crop up.

Right now, researchers are looking at travel and trade patterns from Mexico to shed light on how the virus has spread and will continue to spread. There’s a large trade of pigs from the United States and Canada, as well as pig trades from other countries, each year into Mexico, he stated.

“There’s a lot of mixing, and a lot of potential for viruses. It’s equally likely that it emerged in Mexico as it is in Canada and the United States,” stated Daszak.

Daszak continued by stating, “the main driving factors for an emerging infectious disease are the demographics of people, livestock production and changing food production strategies.”

“Scientists know there are several thousand viruses, more than a million viruses could be out there, assuming every vertebrate species on the planet has 20 viruses that no other vertebrate has, and there are 50,000 vertebrates,” he said.

“The lesson from the swine flu outbreak is that ‘we missed the boat.’ While resources were thrown at avian flu in Southeast Asia, the newest virus has emerged at the United States’ doorstep,” he stated.

He continued with,”We should have been out there looking for these things happening. We should have been working better with those pig farms or with in any industry in a hot zone.”

“Anyone who is building pig farms or poultry farms in a hot zone of emerging infectious diseases should increase security, look out for new diseases in livestock or people, and investigate any novel diseases rigorously,” he ended his statements with.

According To CDC

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that each gene segment of 2009 H1N1 had its closest ancestor in swine influenza virus, and officials hypothesized that the reassortment of these genes occurred in pigs,” stated Nancy Cox, director of the CDC’s Influenza Division.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s where it occurred, but that was our working hypothesis based on the genetic relationship of each of the gene segments,” she stated.

Regardless of the outcome of the swine flu or the 2009 H1N1, more infectious diseases will crop up over time, and there’s no end in sight.

Daszak statement will finish this article with “When you’re in a genetic arms race like this, we’re always going to be fighting this battle.”

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