Foundations in Microbiology 9th Edition by Kathleen Park Talaro, Barry Chess

Exercise 2

Critical thinking is the ability to reason and solve problems using facts and concepts. These question can be approached from a number of angles, and in most cases, they do not have a single correct answer.
a. Explain how the antibody content of a patient's sera could be used to predict which strain of influenza predominated during a previous epidemic.
b. Explain the precise way that cross-species influenza infections give rise to new and different strains of virus.
c. Relate this answer to the avian influenza virus and how it could cause a human pandemic.