Hey, it's Flora and you're listening to Science Friday.

The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighboring Uganda is caused by the Bundy-Busia virus.

There's no specific treatment or vaccine for this strain, unlike the more common Zaire strain, which caused the 2014 outbreak.

Here to give us an update and put the news in context is Dr. Christian Happy.

He's a molecular biologist who has dedicated his career to improving genomic sequencing

capabilities and virus monitoring across the continent of Africa.

Dr. Happy is a distinguished professor at Redeemer's University and

runs the Institute of Genomics and Global Health in Nigeria. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. So I want to start with the, I want to start with the Bundy-Bujo virus. What's different about it compared to this Zayr strain?

The Bundy-Bujo virus or strain of Ebola is different from the Zaire strain, simply because

it has diverged. It has evolved. It has followed a different evolutionary path. And for that reason,

the virus is quite divergent from those are your strain. And that divergence actually creates

its own challenge because diagnostics, vaccines, and drugs are often very strain-specific

because they are targeting some very specific

epitops in any virus. And because of the Bungibuja virus has not been studied extensively,

that is a reason why now we want to use this outbreak in order to not only sequence a virus,

but actually leverage the data that will be coming

from the outbreak to develop the necessary countermeasures. And these countermeasures are drugs,

vaccines, and diagnostics. Had it not been sequenced before?

Not really. I think, you know, when we had that last outbreak, when the Bujim-Bujan outbreak,

I mean, occurred, I think that was probably 2007.

There were, I mean, at that time, genomic sequencing was not really at the stage where it is now.

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