The software allows researchers to zoom in on areas of interest -- such as Hong Kong . Image courtesy of Ohio State University. 30 April 2007 (Sawf News) - A team of biomedical experts, led by Daniel Janies of Ohio State University have designed a new, interactive map of the spread of the avian flu virus (H5N1) that for the first time incorporates genetic, geographic and evolutionary information that may help predict where the next outbreak of the virus is likely to occur.
In the process, they also tested hypotheses about the nature of specific strains of the virus that appear to be heading westward and have the ability to infect humans.
Researchers used special software to create an evolutionary tree of the virus’s mutations. They used Keyhole Markup Language in Google Earth to project the tree onto the globe and then chose colors and symbols to indicate different hosts that carry the virus and where they live. TimeSpan, another function in Google Earth, allowed them to animate the spread of the virus over the past decade.
The map is chock-full of additional information. Clicking on a specific viral subtype generates a popup window revealing diagnostic mutations that distinguish one strain of the virus from another, and all of the data is linked to the National Institute of Health’s GenBank.
In creating the supermap, researchers studied genetic data from 351 isolates of the virus. They were especially interested in discovering if certain hosts were carrying specific forms of the virus and which viruses carried specific mutations enabling transmission to humans.
The study appears online this week in the April issue of Systematic Biology.
The avian flu virus was first recognized in wild aquatic birds in Guangdong, China in 1996. It then spread to chickens and humans in Hong Kong the following year. From 1997 until 2005, it emerged in several Southeast Asian countries and spread via multiple hosts throughout central and southern China, Russia, the Middle East and India. To date, additional outbreaks have been reported as far west as Europe and Africa and as far east as Japan, Korea and Indonesia.
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