FluSurver Tool in v2.0

Influenza Surveillance

Preparing for the next wave

The FluSurver is a research tool developed to help the influenza research community with the identification, analysis and interpretation of mutations in influenza sequences.

The FluSurver allows researchers, clinician scientists and surveillance labs to rapidly screen their influenza sequences for potentially interesting mutations to identify candidates for phenotypic changes or special epidemiological relevance. For the latter, we provide geographic and temporal frequency of occurrence as well as co-occurrence of mutations. For phenotypic changes we utilize our in-house database of curated literature annotations for mutation effects such as drug resistance, host receptor specificity, virulence, antigenic drift and antibody escape mutants. We also show the position of the mutation(s) in structural models and highlight if mutations are close to common drug, host receptor or antibody binding sites or if a glycosylation motif is lost or created through a mutation. The FluSurver has already been instrumental in the discovery of new influenza strain variants with altered antiviral susceptibility, host specificity, glycosylation and antigenic properties.

In EpiFlu 2.0, FluSurver integration has been vastly improved allowing faster and larger set analyses as well as providing mutation frequencies automatically kept up to date with latest GISAID data.