The genetic mutations in the recently recreated, 1918 flu are similar to those seen in the H5N1 avian flu virus killing tens of millions of poultry and some people in Asia.
"We felt we had to recreate the virus and run these experiments to understand the biological properties that made the 1918 virus so exceptionally deadly," says Terrence Tumpey of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, who helped write the reports published jointly this week in the journals Nature and Science.
The experiment, in which the virus was recreated used a process called reverse genetics uses a preserved sample of the 1918 virus.
Researchers are then able to test it in the laboratory and in several animals.
