The Influenza Genome Sequencing Project has reached a major milestone by publishing the entire genetic blueprints of more than 2,000 human and avian influenza viruses. Dr David Spiro and Dr Claire Fraser at the Microbial Sequencing Center, Maryland, US, direct the project along with Dr Elodie Ghedin from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Worldwide, influenza results in an estimated 250,000 to half a million deaths annually. Seasonal flu shots are updated every year to target the latest strains in circulation but the speed with which the virus mutates makes this challenging.

An even greater concern is the potential for an influenza pandemic caused by the emergence of a new, highly lethal virus strain that is easily transmitted from person to person. The "Spanish flu" pandemic of 1918 swept the globe and killed an estimated 40m people, according to the World Health Organisation.

The genome sequence of that strain of flu was published back in 2005 and, at the time, researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that it developed in birds and was similar to today's bird flu that has sparked fears of another pandemic.

However, that H5N1 viral strain of flu finds it difficult to transfer between humans and would need to mutate before a pandemic occurs. This research could help scientists understand how such a mutation might come about and was made possible through funding from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

"This information will help scientists understand how influenza viruses evolve and spread," said Dr Elias Zerhouni, the director of the NIH.

"It will aid in the development of new flu vaccines, therapies and diagnostics."

The sequence data is freely available to the public via GenBank, an Internet-accessible database of genetic sequences. The announcement this week represents a ten-fold data increase, in terms of numbers of genomes, in just two years.

"A few years ago, only limited genetic information on influenza viruses existed in the public domain, and much of the sequence data was incomplete," said Dr Maria Giovanni, who oversees the NIAID Microbial Sequencing Centers.

"The Influenza Genome Sequencing Project has filled that gap by vastly increasing the amount of influenza sequence data and rapidly making it available to the entire scientific community," she continued.

"Subsequently, there has been a marked increase in the number of scientists worldwide depositing influenza genome sequence data into the public domain including scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

At the start of 2006, scientists at St. Jude deposited sequence data from 169 complete bird flu genomes.

"These studies provide the first fundamental insight into the evolution of influenza viruses in nature - the source of all influenza viruses that affect humans, domestic animals and birds," Dr Robert Webster, a member of the Infectious Diseases department at St. Jude, said at the time.

"This information is a true gold mine, and we are inviting all of the miners to help us unlock the secrets of influenza."

A separate research team at the University of Helsinki, Finland, has been scouring the fruit fly genome for all genes related to cell growth and division. For the first time, hundreds of genes have been mapped out in a single study, which could influence what cancer related genes are targeted by drug developers.

The research team, led by Jussi Taipale, identified a number of genes whose exact function is unknown, as well as the majority of known growth regulators.

The group claim that: "This set of genes provides an excellent starting point for future studies concentrating on the interactions between genes involved in cell growth."