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The speaker discusses the influenza virus, specifically type A influenza that causes bird flu in avians. They mention the Spanish influenza pandemic in 1918, which resulted from the virus spreading from avians to humans. Influenza viruses have the ability to evolve and undergo mutations, leading to the emergence of new strains. The virus can be transmitted from wild animals like ducks to domestic poultry and then to humans. Humans can also contribute to the spread of the virus through activities like transporting infected animals. The speaker emphasizes the need for rapid diagnosis tools to identify new influenza strains that can affect humans and prevent outbreaks. They also highlight the importance of ongoing surveillance for influenza viruses, as new strains continuously arise. Hi everybody. So I'll be talking about the pathogen that I'm studying at the moment, which is the influenza virus, specifically type A influenza, which causes bird flu in avians. You have probably heard about the Spanish influenza pandemic that happened in 1918 and killed millions of people worldwide. Well, this pandemic arose as a result of an influenza virus that was able to develop a strain that got spread from avians to humans. And the reason why this happened is because influenza viruses, they have an impressive ability to evolve and to undergo mutations. And so new strains emerge very frequently. And some of these strains, they can affect humans as well as swines. So to give you a bit of a background on the transmission of this pathogen, mutations are not the only reason for the transmission of influenza A viruses. Wild animals, for example, wild ducks that live in the lakes and lagoons, they are able to transmit the virus to domestic poultry and then from domestic poultry, the viruses can be transmitted to us humans. Interestingly, humans can also play a role in the spread of the viruses. For example, when farmers and truck drivers, they move the food and poultry around the farms or between farms. If animals are infected, then the viruses will be would be spread around the farms and to humans as well. Because the emergence of influenza strains that affect humans is still an ongoing threat, I believe it is necessary to have in hand diagnosis tools that provide a rapid and efficient identification of the pathogen. And for this reason, in the lab that I'm working, we've been using hairway organoids, which are basically 3D modules that mimic the structure and the function of the human hairways to test for influenza infection. So these organoids have proven to be very efficient, has intracellular and extracellular viral loads increased significantly. And secondly, we also tested how effective 2D models were to identify influenza A viruses and then compared these two. It seems that the 2D models are better than the 3D modules because the virus is replicated much more. So the point of my research and what I want to pass to people is that we as researchers, we need to develop diagnosis tools that allows us to identify new influenza strains that are able to affect humans as quickly as possible so that an outbreak can be prevented. And also, I want to make people aware that surveillance on influenza viruses, it needs to be on because new strains of these pathogens are continuously arising and the probability of a strain that affects humans and of strains that we do not have immunity for to arise is high. So I just want to make that message clear and make everyone aware that we are still able to suffer from influenza viruses. Thank you for listening and I hope you find influenza viruses as interesting as I do.