Because I have the equipment, it's an experiment I can do in a month rather than in 10 years.
Ducks catch the flu from wild birds, chickens, pigs or people.
While ducks do not get sick, they cannot get rid of the flu bug either. Magor is sorting through thousands of duck genes to find which ones the flu viruses might switch off in order to avoid being detected by a duck's immune system. Determining which genes are being switched off could lead to a new approach to fighting the flu. But that also means that company would retain the rights to the collection, and I would have to buy them whenever I wanted to look at them. Now we can do it right here.