Despite the major threat to human health posed by these viruses, there was very little information available on the entire genomes of bird flu viruses. Now we're in a much better position to understand what makes these viruses tick. And that could help us learn how to control the avian influenza viruses that threaten humans.

Despite the major threat to human health posed by these viruses, there was very little information available on the entire genomes of bird flu viruses. The St. Jude Influenza Virus Genome project provides a major contribution to our understanding of H5N1 and other bird flu viruses. Now we're in a much better position to understand what makes these viruses tick. And that could help us learn how to control the avian influenza viruses that threaten humans.

I don't think anybody can predict at this time what the future holds for the H5 outbreaks. It's pretty scary.

What we've offering our colleagues in the flu business is to now mine that data themselves and to conduct experiments that are suggested by our results.

We documented a clear difference between bird viruses and human viruses.

We documented a clear difference between bird viruses and human viruses. You need much more work to demonstrate this actually contributes to virulence in nature.