Break Out The Face Masks: Swine Flu Has Mutated

With all the hysteria concerning H1N1 aka swine flu, prepare for people to start barricading themselves in their houses:

Chine has detected 8 cases if swine flu mutation, according to a health official.

Luckily, the strain found by China has an "isolated spread in the mainland" and is still susceptible to drugs and preventable by vaccine. Other information about the mutated strain--cases or deaths associated, where it was found, etc. has not been released.

The World Heath Organization (WHO) announced last week they were looking into a variant of the flu that may have caused two deaths and a severe case in Norway. This mutation isn't new--it has been found all over the world and in both mild and severe cases. However, Norway's Institute of Public Health announced this mutation may cause more severe disease by effectively infecting the deeper tissues in the airway.

The evolution and therefore mutation of viruses is not unusual. Viruses replicate incredibly fast and can infect many people easily. They must also be continuously evolving to stay ahead of the host cells. In particular RNA viruses have a high rate of mutation because they lack a way to correct any mutations. DNA replication has an enzyme that can go back, find and correct mutations that might have occured. To give you an sense of mutation rates, here are some stats according to Wikipedia (so take it with a grain of salt?):

-Eukaryotes (ex: humans, plants, animals) -.0010 to .00001 per base per generation

-Bacteria- .00000001 per base per generation

-DNA viruses (ex herpes virus, smallpox virus, human papillomavirus-HPV)- .000001 to .00000001 per base per generation

-RNA viruses (hepatitis, HIV, influenza, Norwalk virus)-.001 to .00001 per base per generation