To assess the identity of the HA epitopes in IAVs, in silico analysis was performed by utilizing bioinformatics tools at the Influenza Research Database (http://www.fludb.org) [51] . The two programs used in this study were Search for Protein Sequences and Identify Short Peptides in flu proteins. The former program was used to define the number of total sequences in HA proteins according to the Subtype parameter (H1 or H2-H16). The latter program defined the number of hits (P5 or P31) in the H1 or H2-H16 total sequences. Because there are no standards for evaluating short peptide sequence homology, we chose the fuzzy match analysis to represent the identical level of a peptide sequence to HA proteins. The analysis type was chosen as fuzzy match, which meant .50% of characters were identical to the searched aa string. For example, entering GILGFVFTL may also find AILGFVFTI but not ALIGFVFSI.