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To the musically hip, a "mashup" is a high-tech remix, one that features two or more popular songs digitally spliced together. But to Daniel Janies and his colleagues, the term has a different meaning entirely. They made a software mashup, one that will help researchers and the general public get a handle on the avian flu.

Since the avian flu was first recognized in wild aquatic birds in Guangdong, China in 1996, the virus has mutated many times. Birds and insects have carried it, and so have humans. To date, there have been 291 cases of avian flu in humans, and 172 deaths. Knowing how the virus has spread over time could help researchers predict future outbreaks.

Janies, an assistant professor of biomedical informatics at Ohio State, and his partners at the University of Colorado and the American Museum of Natural History combined data on 351 strains of the avian flu virus with the software program Google Earth. Such software mashups are becoming more common in science, as researchers use publicly available software to visualize -- and interact with -- their data.

The result is an interactive map of the entire globe that shows how the virus has mutated over time.

“The map gives us a whole new way of seeing the virus in action and understanding what it is – and isn't – doing.”
—Ohio State researcher Daniel Janies

Anyone can download Google Earth, as well as the avian flu data that Janies and his team used. That means that anyone can run the software and see the avian flu map for themselves.

Users can pinpoint a particular strain of a virus, and track it across the world, from city to city, and host to host. The software links to detailed genetic information from the National Institutes of Health.

“The map gives us a whole new way of seeing the virus in action and understanding what it is – and isn't – doing,” says Janies.

He and his partners aren't stopping there, though. They're making mashups to track other diseases, including SARS.

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