CHICAGO, Apr 12: Even as US officials this week awaited the arrival of a sample of the new bird flu virus from China – typically the first step in making a flu vaccine – government-backed researchers had already begun testing a “seed” strain of the virus made from the genetic code posted on the Internet. This new, faster approach is the result of a collaboration among the government, vaccine maker Novartis and a unit of the J. Craig Venter Institute, which is using synthetic biology – in which scientists take the genetic code of the virus and use it as a recipe to build the virus from scratch. (agencies)
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