Don

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Dont 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
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???
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).
According to Yamada et al. (2006) these amino
acid positions have variants that enable the
avian virus to bind to human receptors.
Special thanks to Katja Schultz, Sam Donovan,
Tony Weisstein, Margaret Waterman and Ethel
Stanley