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100-year-old pandemic flu viruses yield new genomes

Lung samples housed in medical archives have yielded three genomes for the influenza A virus that caused the 1918 global pandemic. The sequences reveal mutations that might have triggered the pandemic’s devastating second wave.
  1. Martha I. Nelson

    1. Martha I. Nelson is in the Computational Biology Branch, National Center for Biotechnology Information, Division of Intramural Research, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.

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  2. Elodie Ghedin

    1. Elodie Ghedin is in the Systems Genomics Section, Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, Division of Intramural Research, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA.

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The last time a mysterious respiratory virus brought the world to its knees was in 1918, when a pandemic caused by an influenza A H1N1 virus spread around the globe. The evolutionary steps taken by that H1N1 virus are of particular interest today, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. To investigate the virus’s evolution, Patrono et al.1 scoured museum archives in Europe for century-old lung samples containing RNA from the 1918 virus. Writing in Nature Communications, the researchers describe the fruits of their labour — genome sequences for three 1918 H1N1 viruses. Their work suggests that the 1918 flu virus acquired mutations during the first wave of the pandemic in the Northern Hemisphere’s spring of 1918 that might explain why the second wave in autumn was so deadly.

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Nature 607, 244-245 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01741-9

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the National Institutes of Health or Department of Health and Human Services.

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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