University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have isolated the set of three genes that made the Spanish flu the most deadly influenza pandemic in history.
A team led by UW-Madison virologists Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Tokiko Watanabe identified the genes that give the virus the ability to reproduce in lung tissue — the trait which caused primary pneumonia among its victims and made the 1918 influenza pandemic so deadly. The findings were reported Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.