Kansas State University researchers are surveying for swine influenza viruses as part of a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

According to Juergen Richt, Regents distinguished professor of veterinary medicine and director of the US Department of Homeland Security’s Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases: “Swine influenza are constantly changing.”

“There’s a constant mutational rate, and sometimes they’re changing very rapidly using a mechanism called reassortment—gene segments from one influenza virus are mixed with gene segments from a different influenza virus. We are very concerned about these genes coming together to create new surface proteins that have not been seen in the human population.”