Question

2) An outbreak of the human flu virus among individuals that had received their annual flu shot led researchers to hypothesize that the outbreak was due to a new strain of virus. Therefore, they decided to compare the genetic characteristics of the purported new viral strain to that of the virus for which the flu shot vaccine had been developed. The researchers determined the number of point mutations at a specific locus in the new viral genome from blood samples obtained from 16 infected people and compared the number of point mutations in those samples to the mean number of mutations (= 12) known for the virus used in the vaccine development. Are the number of mutations in the virus isolated from patients in the flu outbreak significantly less than that in the vaccine virus?

Mutations

13

10

12

9

5

14

8

8

16

12

2

11

5

13

14

16

Answer 1