Reference no: EM132415285

1. What is the structure of the influenza virus? What are its personal characteristics?

2. What is an antigen? How does the immune system recognize antigens?

3. What are the immunodominant antigens of influenza? On what part of the virus are they located?

4. What is antigenic shift, antigenic drift, and original antigenic sin.

5. What are the components of the yearly influenza vaccine? How is it manufactured? How do you explain your friends' experiences with the flu vaccine?

6. Do we have to get vaccinated every year against influenza? What effect will previous years' vaccines have on the immune response to the current influenza strain?

7. Other organisms can be infected by influenza-what are they? How does it spread within and between species, and what determines whether productive replication of the virus occurs?

8. What are the epidemiological characteristics of infection with avian and/or swine flu as compared to yearly flu? What about these viruses causes such public concern?

9. How does the immune response to yearly flu differ from that of the avian flu? How does this relate to the characteristics of infection with avian flu?

10. H1N1 influenza has been the cause of four pandemics in recent history: 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009. How is it possible to have multiple H1N1 pandemics in the same century?

11. What possible outcomes might happen if swine flu (H1N1) and avian flu (H5N1) reassorted?

12. Would it be efficient to vaccinate against yearly swine and avian flu at the same time? Why or why not?

13. What is the significance of a virus that can directly infect humans from chickens? Why do you think that the 1997 threat did not turn into a pandemic?