ConSortß was used to demonstrate the variation in the nt sequence of segment 7 from 7333 genomes of Influenza A (GeneBank database at NCBI, NIH). All H and N influenza A types, HxNy, are represented in the alignment ( Figure 1 ). In comparison with the InflA probe designed to match a 70-nt region of the Influenza A H3N2 virus, the H5N1 virus differed in 5-nt positions, and the H1N1 virus in three other nt positions (Table 1) . Thus, if a detection probe could tolerate mismatches in nine positions, including the variant nt positions of the H1N1 and the H5N1 viruses, it would fully cover 67 different H and N combinations of Influenza A, i.e. nearly all recorded variants in the chosen region, as demonstrated in the BLASTn search.