{"id":10009,"date":"2025-07-30T17:17:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T22:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=10009"},"modified":"2025-07-30T17:17:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T22:17:19","slug":"gene-swaps-could-let-influenza-jump-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/07\/30\/gene-swaps-could-let-influenza-jump-species\/","title":{"rendered":"Gene-Swaps Could Let Influenza Jump Species"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/how-influenza-reassortment-may-make-bird-flu-more-dangerous\/\">Scientific American<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Influenza viruses like bird flu can mix and match their genomes, and this has played a role in at least three of the last four flu pandemics. Influenza viruses are shifty entities. They accumulate small genetic changes on a regular basis, necessitating yearly updates to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/podcast\/episode\/creating-bird-flu-vaccines-for-humans-at-a-biosecure-laboratory\/\">flu vaccines<\/a>\u00a0because the prior year\u2019s strain may not look much like the following year\u2019s. But they can also make sudden leaps by incurring big genetic changes that may allow them to jump from one animal species to another or to humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A seemingly ingenious and sneaky way for viruses to make these leaps is by swapping genetic material with other flu strains. Called reassortment, this exchange happens when a person or animal is infected with two types of flu virus at the same time. While replicating inside the host cell, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/video\/decoded-what-is-a-virus-exactly\/\">viruses<\/a>\u00a0can grab bits of each other\u2019s genetic code and incorporate them into their own gene sequences.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientific American Influenza viruses like bird flu can mix and match their genomes, and this has played a role in at least three of the last four flu pandemics. Influenza viruses are shifty entities. They accumulate small genetic changes on a regular basis, necessitating yearly updates to the\u00a0flu vaccines\u00a0because the prior year\u2019s strain may not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10009"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10010,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10009\/revisions\/10010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}