A “rewritten” flu virus prompts an identical immune response in mice to a natural infection – meaning it could make a more effective vaccine than traditional options.
The new vaccine virus contains exactly the same proteins as the flu strain it targets, with one major difference: its genome has been rewritten to produce a virus that replicates too slowly to cause any trouble.
“It’s unlike anything nature ever evolved,” says Steffen Mueller, a virologist at Stony Brook University in New York, whose team tested the vaccine in mice.
The team exploited a quirk in the genetic code to weaken the virus…
