Virulence determinants of pandemic influenza viruses英文文献.pdfVIP

Science in medicine Virulence determinants of pandemic influenza viruses 1 1,2,3 Donna M. Tscherne and Adolfo García-Sastre 1Department of Microbiology, 2Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases, and 3Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA. Influenza A viruses cause recurrent, seasonal epidemics and occasional global pandemics with devastating levels of morbidity and mortality. The ability of influenza A viruses to adapt to various hosts and undergo reassortment events ensures constant generation of new strains with unpredict- able degrees of pathogenicity, transmissibility, and pandemic potential. Currently, the combina- tion of factors that drives the emergence of pandemic influenza is unclear, making it impossible to foresee the details of a future outbreak. Identification and characterization of influenza A virus virulence determinants may provide insight into genotypic signatures of pathogenicity as well as a more thorough understanding of the factors that give rise to pandemics. Influenza A virus biology genicity (4–7). Recently, reverse genetic systems for generation of Influenza A virus, a member of the family Orthomyxoviridae, con- influenza A viruses from cloned cDNAs have been established and sists of 8 single-stranded, negative-sense viral RNA (vRNA) seg- used to analyze influenza biology and pathogenesis (8, 9). ments and encode