%0 Journal Article
%T The Modes of Evolutionary Emergence of Primal and Late Pandemic Influenza Virus Strains from Viral Reservoir in Animals: An Interdisciplinary Analysis
%A Dany Shoham
%J Influenza Research and Treatment
%D 2011
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2011/861792
%X Based on a wealth of recent findings, in conjunction with earliest chronologies pertaining to evolutionary emergences of ancestral RNA viruses, ducks, Influenzavirus A (assumingly within ducks), and hominids, as well as to the initial domestication of mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos), jungle fowl (Gallus gallus), wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), wild boar (Sus scrofa), and wild horse (Equus ferus), presumed genesis modes of primordial pandemic influenza strains have multidisciplinarily been configured. The virological fundamentality of domestication and farming of those various avian and mammalian species has thereby been demonstrated and broadly elucidated, within distinctive coevolutionary paradigms. The mentioned viral genesis modes were then analyzed, compatibly with common denominators and flexibility that mark the geographic profile of the last 18 pandemic strains, which reputedly emerged since 1510, the antigenic profile of the last 10 pandemic strains since 1847, and the genomic profile of the last 5 pandemic strains since 1918, until present. Related ecophylogenetic and biogeographic aspects have been enlightened, alongside with the crucial role of spatial virus gene dissemination by avian hosts. A fairly coherent picture of primary and late evolutionary and genomic courses of pandemic strains has thus been attained, tentatively. Specific patterns underlying complexes prone to generate past and future pandemic strains from viral reservoir in animals are consequentially derived. 1. Introduction The historical emergence and pandemic potency of influenza type A virus¡ªa prominent anthropozoonotic single-stranded segmented RNA virus (family Orthomyxoviridae)¡ªhave long constituted challenging phenomena. The Greek physician Hippocrates, the ¡°Father of Medicine,¡± first described influenza in 412£¿BC [1]. The name ¡°influenza¡± was derived from the belief of Italian astrologers in the Middle Ages that the periodic appearance of the disease was in some way related to ¡°influence of heavenly bodies¡± [2]. Rather earthily, the French named influenza as ¡°the grippe,¡± suggesting the acute onset of illness, upon which the patient suddenly was seized or gripped by the disease [3]. Yet still recently, influenza has been seriously attributed to introduction of viruses from the space, due to meteorological processes [4]. As far as the origins of life are concerned at large, it has been proposed that cometary ice might have embodied the provenance of earliest precursors of viruses in general on Planet Earth and perhaps cosmically [5]. Influenza pandemics are
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/irt/2011/861792/