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News

21 Jan 2021

Collaboration is key

By University of Melbourne Dr Brad Gilbertson, Senior Research Officer at the Doherty Institute.

We recently discovered evidence of a major interaction between gene segments that the influenza virus uses to package its genome.

However, we had no evidence for a physical interaction. Unbeknown to us, a research group from the University of Oxford had produced structural evidence for exactly the same interaction, but no evidence for its functional relevance.

After being contacted by this group, we realised that we had both independently identified the same interaction.

We had complementary pieces of the same puzzle, which led to the start of an amazing scientific collaboration and the eventual publication of this work in Nature Microbiology. This was one of the best moments of my scientific career.

To know, at that moment, that we had solved the mechanism by which the influenza virus co-packages particular genes during viral assembly is a feeling that is hard to describe.

Not merely satisfaction, but also relief that we were correct; that our work could be independently verified in the hands of others.

Collaboration is such a wonderful and integral part of science. Truly great things can be discovered by collective minds working together using an interdisciplinary approach – even 16,960 kilometres is not a barrier!

This work provides a major advance in the understanding of the structure of the influenza genome and how this can affect the viruses that are produced in nature when different influenza viruses exchange gene segments.

This process, known as reassortment, is so important as it can lead to the creation of pandemic strains. Hopefully our findings will allow better prediction of which influenza viruses can be created by reassortment and therefore allow us to prepare for the risk of their emergence.

This article was first published in the Celebrating Five Years of the Doherty Institute Impact Report.