Avian flu can be stopped

As you know, viruses can transfer from animals to humans - this also applies to bird flu. Vaccines to defend poultry from flu exist, but the tactic is expensive, and the virus swiftly adapts to evade that protection. The virus can rapidly spread among birds on poultry farms, sometimes with devastating consequences. last year, an outbreak hit the global poultry industry hard, pushing farmers to cull millions of birds in the United States alone. The gene, known as ANP32A, provides the instructions that tell chicken cells how to make a protein that flu viruses rely on to successfully hijack cells. Scientists made two changes to this gene so that the gene’s protein could no longer interact with avian flu viruses. Disrupting the avian virus’s ability to commandeer the protein stopped most genetically edited birds from getting infected. Ideally genetic editing would completely stop the virus from replicating, so it can not pose a risk to birds, or people, at all.