New flu gene found hiding in plain sight, and affects severity of infections

I could write the entire genome of a flu virus in around 100 tweets. It is just 14,000 letters long; for comparison, our genome has over 3 billion letters. This tiny collection of genetic material is enough to kill millions of people. Even though it has been sequenced time and time again, there is still a lot we don’t know about it. A new study beautifully illustrates the depths of our ignorance. Brett Jagger and Paul Digard from the University of Edinburgh have discovered an entirely new flu gene, hiding in plain sight among the 12 we knew about. It’s like someone took the text of Macbeth, put the spaces in different places, and got Hamlet. This new gene, known as PA-X, affects how the virus’s host responds to the virus. Oddly, it seems to reduce the severity of infections. “This is indeed an exciting finding in the flu field,” ...