Fever, chills, sore throat, coughing, aches, and pains? Ah ..... you have the flu! As a measure of prevention, vaccines against seasonal influenza are distributed and administered each fall. Last year though, the outbreak of the H1N1pdm "swine" influenza virus, caught health workers by surprise as this virus not only infected individuals during the spring and summer months, but also seemed to be particularly virulent towards otherwise healthy young people. Even more alarming was increasing evidence that H1N1pdm had acquired resistance to the frontline antiflu drug, Tamiflu. In response to this, computational biologists at the University of Illinois and the University of Utah teamed up to uncover the basis for influenza drug resistance through quantum chemistry, and molecular dynamics simulations with NAMD. The results of this study have recently been reported, and uncovered a two stage binding pathway for Tamiflu in H1N1pdm "swine" and H5N1 "avian" flu proteins, as well as a possible mechanism through which genetic mutations can induce drug resistance in one of the stages. Subsequent efforts at drug design against influenza can take advantage of this discovery. This discovery was made possible through use of so-called GPU computing (see Oct 2007 highlight "Graphics Processors Speed Up Simulations"). More information can be found here.