Sbling Sandy Has ID’d ‘Source’ of Swine Flu

Posted by Greg Laden on April 29, 2009
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Seriously.

Dr. Sandra Porter of Discovering Biology in a Digital World provides evidence that “the California outbreak might be the same strain that caused an outbreak in 2007 at an Ohio country fair.”

What a nice piece of research and blogging.

UPDATED: There is some interesting discussion on Sandy’s blog about the validity and meaning of this finding, and Tara Smith has further discussion here.

I also want to be more specific about one thing: When I say the word “Source” of Swine Flu in the head line, I mean “phylogenetic source” … the actual source of a person’s case of swine flu is another person (or swine) and the ultimate source is the evolution of viruses. I could have switched this to “origin” but that would be even more geographically meaningful (without meaning for that to be the case) and I could have used the word “ancestor” but that is misleading because of the way viuruses “evolve.” So I’m leaving it as source, and I refer you to this question about geography, which I have asked and which I’m sure will be answered soon enough.

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Comments

  1. #1 Nathan Myers
    April 29, 2009

    And another Sbling, Tara Smith, linked from my name above, has a new paper out on the Ohio flu.

    Probably it’s time to form a Scienceblogs Institute.

  2. #2 Kalib Kersh
    April 30, 2009

    I think doubt has been raised about her work on linking the Ohio and 2009 Swine Flu strains. Yet, there is little to correct or qualify her original, questioned conclusions propagated to other pages, such as this one.

    The discussion of phylogenetic source is meaningless if all of the H1N1 sequences are as similar to each other as to the Ohio strain and the 2009 strain.