Influenza A
Influenza viruses belong to the family Orthomyxoviridae. The viral particles are about 80-120 nm in diameter and can be spherical or pleomorphic. Their lipid membrane envelope contains two glycoproteins: hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). These two proteins determine the subtypes of Influenza A virus. There are 16 H subtypes and 9 N subtypes known, but only H1, H2, H3, N1, and N2 are commonly found in human.
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HA is the major surface antigen of the influenza viruses, against which neutralizing antibodies are elicited during virus infection and vaccination. The single polypeptide HA is subsequently cleaved into two polypeptides, HA1 and HA2. The HA1 polypeptide mutates more frequently than HA2, and plays a crucial role in natural selection.
The Influenza A viral genome consists of eight, single negative-strand RNAs that can range between 890 and 2340 nucleotides long, encoding for 11 proteins: hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase (NA), nucleoprotein (NP), M1, M2, NS1, NS2 (nuclear export protein), PA, PB1 (polymerase basic 1), PB1-F2 and PB2.
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Selected Recent Citations:
1. Humoral and cellular immune responses in critically ill influenza A/H1N1-infected patients. Scandinavian Journal of Immunology, April 2021. Click here for the publication.
2. Persistently high antibody responses after AS03-adjuvanted H1N1pdm09 vaccine: Dissecting the HA specific antibody response. Nature, NPJ vaccines, April 2021. Click here for this publication.
3. Long-Term Recovery of the Adaptive Immune System in Rhesus Macaques After Total Body Irradiation. Advances in Radiation Oncology, April 2021. Click here for this publication.
4. Nanobodies mapped to cross-reactive and divergent epitopes on A(H7N9) influenza hemagglutinin using yeast display. Nature, Feb. 2021. Click here for this publication.
5. A facile technology for the high-throughput sequencing of the paired VH: VL and TCRβ: TCRα repertoires. Sci. Adv. 6, eaay9093 (2020). Click here for this publication.
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