An Ecuadorian scientist has cloned the genome of the H1N1 virus that has caused the A/H1N1 flu, Ecuador's daily newspaper "El Comercio" reported Tuesday.

The newspaper said that the cloning by Washington Cardenas would help the country develop vaccines against the influenza which has so far caused 82 deaths and infected 834 people in Ecuador.

Ecuador has filed a request at the Pan-American Health Organization for 900,000 doses of A/H1N1 vaccines. The country has an estimated population of 13.8 million.

The newspaper quoted Cardenas as saying that the cloning had been done by his biomedicine team at the Escuela Superior Politecnica del Litoral in Guayaquil.

The cloned virus genome was then sent to several labs in New York to determine the order of each nucleotide or sequencing, and the outcome was already deposited in the worldwide genetic database, GenBank, for reference.

Cardenas' team, which started its cloning research in April, was able to clone the eight H1N1 virus genes after several samples of the virus were injected into fertilized chicken eggs to later extract the virus' genetic material for cloning.

(Xinhua News Agency December 16, 2009)