(credit: Eneas De Troya )
When a virus jumps from wildlife to humans, it could either cause a few infections and fizzle out—or it could spark an explosive outbreak. For instance, health experts feared that H5N1 bird flu would lead to a massive and deadly pandemic in humans in the early 2000s, but with its current limited ability to jump from human to human, it has yet to kick off such a large-scale plague. Zika, Ebola, and HIV/AIDS, on the other hand, have.
Figuring out beforehand the type of viral scenario that will unfold with a new, emerging germ would be vital to protecting public health, allowing health officials to anticipate and thwart the spread of infections before they get out of hand. But researchers have largely struggled with how to make those predictions.
To try to break down the molecular recipe for a pandemic, researchers analyzed a range of biological features from 203 human-infecting viruses—a mix of those that have and have not caused big outbreaks. The researchers aimed to find predictors of infectious potential among each virus’ characteristics, including its family tree; genome’s make-up (DNA or RNA), length, and segmentation; outer structure of its viral particle; tendency to recombine with relative viruses and create variation in its genetics; time spent in a victim; deadliness; and whether or not it spreads via a vector, such as mosquitoes and ticks. The results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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