Reconstruction of the 1918 Influenza Virus: Unexpected Rewards from the Past
Jeffery K. Taubenberger,
David Baltimore,
Peter C. Doherty,
Howard Markel,
David M. Morens,
Robert G. Webster,
Ian A. Wilson
Affiliations
Jeffery K. Taubenberger
Viral Pathogenesis and Evolution Section, Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
David Baltimore
Division of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
Peter C. Doherty
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Howard Markel
Center for the History of Medicine and Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, University of Michigan Medical Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
David M. Morens
Office of the Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA
Robert G. Webster
Division of Virology, Department of Infectious Diseases, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Ian A. Wilson
Department of Molecular Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA
ABSTRACT The influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 killed approximately 50 million people. The unusually severe morbidity and mortality associated with the pandemic spurred physicians and scientists to isolate the etiologic agent, but the virus was not isolated in 1918. In 1996, it became possible to recover and sequence highly degraded fragments of influenza viral RNA retained in preserved tissues from several 1918 victims. These viral RNA sequences eventually permitted reconstruction of the complete 1918 virus, which has yielded, almost a century after the deaths of its victims, novel insights into influenza virus biology and pathogenesis and has provided important information about how to prevent and control future pandemics.
