The threat of an Avian Flu pandemic that may soon transmit from man to man is real.
A strain of Avian Flu that had killed humans in the past has now appeared among domestic birds in the UK.

Avian flu virus is a segmented negative strand RNA virus. Eight segments of RNA code for 11 proteins.
N and HA proteins are under intense selection for variation because each virus form creates life-long immunity upon infection. Viral antigens rapidly evolve to retain infectious property.

In this integrated database we are providing access to heterogeneous information that are of value to researchers in epidemiology, virology and vaccine development.

We have chosen evolutionary distance, as specified by phylogenetic trees, to rationalize the information integration scheme of this database.

The assumption here is that virus properties, such as virulence, infectivity, host-specificity, the ability to jump host species, geographic locations, morbidity in an epidemic, or host-specific reactions are related by evolutionary lineages.

RNA and protein sequence data, and phylogenetic trees constructed over these sequences, form the core of this database.