We’re always in favor of stopping a massive viral pandemic, or at least knowing more about what might make one happen. So we read a recent PLOS Pathogens paper with interest. The general theme is similar to this February 2019 paper from Anice Lowen’s lab in PNAS. To paraphrase Bill Murray in Ghostbusters: birds and humans living together, mass hysteria!

Here, Emory researchers looked at the M segment of influenza virus, which appears to determine host restriction, or the ability of viruses that infect bird cells to migrate to mammals. The M segment, was important for emergence of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic flu.

One of eight influenza gene segments, the M segment encodes a protein that can interfere with cellular functions (autophagic vesicles) on which the virus relies. The new data reveal that reductions in M2 protein occurred in connection with past important adaptation events, such as when a Eurasian avian-like swine virus emerged from birds in the 1970s.

“This mechanism constitutes a novel paradigm in RNA virus host adaptation, and reveals a new species barrier for IAV, which may be highly relevant for the emergence of avian IAVs into humans,” the authors conclude.

Former graduate student Brenda Calderon is the first author. Senior author John Steel was at Emory and is now at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.