Using genes resurrected from the 1918 Spanish influenza virus, the virus responsible for a pandemic that killed an estimated 20 million people, scientists have gathered important new clues to why the virus spread quickly and killed efficiently. Adding the genes to a comparatively benign strain of influenza (pictured), shows that a minor genetic change can turn a mild form of the virus into a highly virulent strain. Photo date: September 2004 Image credit: courtesy Yoshihiro Kawaoka, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Yoshi Kawaoka, left, professor of pathobiological sciences in the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, and post-doctoral fellow Masato Hatta, in the lab. Kawaoka's work with flu virus has helped solve a long-standing puzzle of how viruses make infectious particles called virions. Photo date: August 2001 Image credit: Michael Forster Rothbart

	Yoshi Kawaoka, professor of virology. Photo date: August 2001 Image credit: Michael Forster Rothbart
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