Sequence-based analyses have become very popular recently and have shed some interesting insights into possible underlying mechanisms of influenza seasonality. Many of these also urge for (or at least hint at) the need for more sequences from tropical regions to be made publicly available to increase the accuracy of such analyses [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] . Other studies have analyzed genetic data together with the even more scarcely available antigenic data, in attempts to understand and even predict the most likely emerging strains [22] [23] [24] [25] . Even the application of mass spectrometry has been applied to influenza surveillance [26] .