Where did the genomic structure of the Spanish influenza virus come from?

Egon Schiele's "The Family," 1918Belvedere Museum

Imagine you have traveled back in time out of this pandemic. Unfortunately for you, you find yourself in yet another pandemic. Yet time, things are more primal as you are in the midst of the 1918 Spanish influenza.

The Spanish flu is one of the lesser-known pandemics in our world history because at that time World War 1 was ongoing. The governments across the world did not want to take the focus off of the war, so politicians never publicly spoke about it, regardless of the deaths of around a hundred million people. So if you were there during those times, sick with this flu, things were not looking good for you. No one at the time knew that it was a virus killing all these people. By the time we were able to look at a virus under the microscope, all the people infected with the Spanish flu had either died or completely recovered. The genetic code of this virus was not discovered until almost a century later by Jefferey Taubenberger and Ann Reid, with a huge contribution from Johan Hultin. It all started when Johan was a graduate student in the 1950s at the University of Iowa and heard one of the visiting professors saying that there might be a way to recover the 1918 virus. The suggestion was to go to Alaska and get a sample of this virus from the bodies of the individuals who had died from Spanish influenza and were buried under the permafrost. Most of these bodies would not have yet completely rotted because of the colder temperatures and the virus might still be found in the tissue in a “suspended animation”. Because of his previous connections in Alaska, Johan decided to take up this task and went to the small town of Brevig Mission. There he received the permission he needed from the Native American community to continue his work. To get to the 72 dead bodies of individuals who were buried without coffins (due to how rapidly the virus had infected the community), the earth needed to be melted first and then dug. After digging for some time they found some bodies, completely intact. They cracked the chest open of one of the bodies to get lung samples, which were put on dry ice to keep cold. The only problem was that they did not have enough dry ice to last the whole way back to Iowa. So, they had to buy all of the CO2 fire extinguishers in the area to spray onto the samples to keep them frozen. All the CO2 fire extinguishers were used for a small amount of tissue sample. After all this hard work Johan arrived at the lab, ground up the sample, andinjecteds it into rabbits and mice hoping the animals would get sick because this would mean the virus was still alive. Alas, that did not happen (luckily for the lab animals) because the virus was dead!

Time passed, and Johan became a retired doctor. While he was on vacation reading Science magazine in the 1990s, he came across an article about a team of researchers (Jefferey and Ann’s team). They were trying to piece together the genome of the Spanish Influenza virus from samples from WW1 soldiers, but they did not have the optimal samples like Johan did. In the 1990s, the equipment and techniques to look at the DNA of this virus which Johan did not have, was developed. To make up for these discrepancies, Johan connected with this team of researchers and made it his mission to go back to Alaska to get them more samples. Although in Alaska, most of the bodies were significantly decomposed by then, Johan did manage to collect enough samples to mail to Jefferey and Ann. This time it worked; Johan finally did it! They found the virus intact in the samples, though it took them seven years to piece together the entire genetic code of this virus. In 2005 is when they completed the entire DNA sequence of the Spanish influenza virus. They also figured out that this virus did not just leave our civilization abruptly. It is still present, but it has evolved into what we encounter as the seasonal flu now. All of this was only possible because of Johan and his team, Jefferey and Ann’s team, the lives of those who were taken from this world too soon, and SCIENCE!

This piece is inspired by an episode from the podcast, Science VS. For more information, check them out!