How do flu viruses mutate and what effect does it have?
Mutations have two main effects: First the mutation can give the virus the ability to be transmitted easily among humans. Second, the mutation can change the proteins on the outside of the virus enough so that our immune systems do not recognize it as something seen before (and thus responding quickly to kill the invaders). HOW these mutations occur is a bit mre complicated, but there are two basic ways: antigenic drift and antigenic shift. I’ll explain what they are, but first you need to know a little about the structure of a virus, and how your immune system works.
