Dan Janies, assistant professor in the department of biomedical informatics at Ohio State University:

This interactive map shows the spread of the avian flu virus over the past decade.

We created an evolutionary tree of the virus's mutations, and used the program Google Earth to project that tree onto the globe.

The lines show where different strains of the virus mutated, and where they spread.

The idea is to help predict where the next outbreak of the virus is likely to occur.

We chose different colors and symbols to indicate the different animal hosts that carry the virus and where they live.

Birds, humans and other mammals, and insects taht carried teh virus are all represented.

If you click on a specific host animal, you'll get a popup window that shows the mutations that distinguish one strain of the virus from another.

Then we linked our map back to the primary genomic data housed at 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.

We now think we better understand whether mutations that seem to be associated with certain hosts or geographic regions appeared by chance... or whether they were true adaptations of the virus as it spread.

One thing we found was a strong association between a specific strain and mammals that carried the virus.

We think it's important to track how this particular strain is spreading, because it appears to be so infective and deadly.

The map is really a new way for investigators to share information about avian flu outbreaks with each other and the public.

In the meantime, we are working on mapping other diseases, such as SARS.