Skip to main content
Fig. 3 | Laboratory Animal Research

Fig. 3

From: Animal models for the risk assessment of viral pandemic potential

Fig. 3

Conceptual construction of human, swine and ferret respiratory tract, IAV infection and transmission. The human type and avian type IAV receptor distributions are depicted in simplicity based on de Graaf et al. (2014) [63]. a Human and swine IAVs replicates primarily in the upper respiratory tract in the respective hosts and some may spread into the lower respiratory tract. The viruses are transmissible. A high dose of avian IAV may allow the virus to reach the lower respiratory tract for replication and some may overflow into the upper respiratory tract, but the receptor binding and internalization not leading to the virus replication may have the virus ‘cleaned up’. b A high dose of an avian IAV with the dual specificity mutations Q226L and G228S or Q226L alone may behave like an avian IAV in human or swine. c An avian IAV with E627K change in PB2 may replicate in the upper respiratory tract of human or swine and may spread into the lower respiratory tract like human or swine IAV in human or swine (a), and the virus is theoretically transmissible. d Human or swine IAV replication in ferrets may be similar as in human or swine. An avian IAV with the HA change for the avian and human dual receptor specificity may be trapped in the upper respiratory tract of ferret and may behave in ferret like in human or swine (b). Avian IAV with E627 or K627 PB2 might behave similarly in ferrets. An avian IAV, without the specific receptor in the upper respiratory tract of ferret, may replicate in the lower respiratory tract but relatively poorly due to relatively low expression of SAα-2,3 glycans. The overflowing avian IAV, although with a low likelihood, may not be ‘cleaned up’ due to lack of SAα-2,3 glycans in the upper respiratory tract of ferret, and may occasionally get transmitted to nearby ferrets

Back to article page