Transcript Don`t Kiss a Chicken in Cairo

Don’t Kiss a Chicken in Cairo
Or
Human and Avian Influenza Virus Hemagglutinin 5
Protein Phylogeny
By Kam Dahlquist, Christine Tuaillon, Linda Weinland and Brian White
= Human; Asia
Avian flu has become one of the
emerging diseases of interest to
humans around the world.
We
chose to investigate the amino acid
sequences in the H5 (hemagglutinin)
protein, which facilitates attachment
of the virus to receptive cells in birds,
humans and other host animals.
After generating a tree using the
NCBI
Influenza
website,
we
transferred the sequence data to
MESQUITE and generated a tree in
which the avian and human
sequences
are
compared.
In
addition, our tree incorporates data
from different regions of the world.
Global transmission of the virus and
its ability to rapidly mutate have
stimulated a great deal of debate
among scientists. When and where
could human-to-human transmission
occur???
= Avian; Asia
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= Human; Middle East
= Avian; Middle East
= Avian; Europe
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Special thanks to Katja Schultz, Sam Donovan, Tony Weisstein, Margaret Waterman and Ethel Stanley
According to Yamada et al.
(2006) these amino acid
positions have variants
that enable the avian virus
to bind to human
receptors.
None of these positions
had variants in the
sequences we
examined. However,
the three positions next
to Gly 139 and Asn 182
DO have sequence
variations in the human
sequences that are not
found in avian
sequences (highlighted
in yellow).