Initial Genetic Characterization of the 1918 “Spanish” Influenza Virus | Semantic Scholar

Reverse genetics was used to generate an influenza virus bearing all eight gene segments of the pandemic virus to study the properties associated with its extraordinary virulence, and confirmed that the coordinated expression of the 1918 virus genes most certainly confers the unique high-virulence phenotype observed with this pandemicirus.

Sequence and phylogenetic analysis of the completed 1918 influenza virus genes shows them to be the most avian-like among the mammalian-adapted viruses, which supports the hypotheses that (1) the pandemic virus contains genes derived from avan-like influenza virus strains and (2) the 1918 virus is the common ancestor of human and classical swine H1N1 influenza viruses.