“…However, there are far fewer studies of the receptor selectivity determinants of influenza B virus HA (Suzuki et al, 1992;Matrosovich et al, 1993;Gambaryan et al, 1997Gambaryan et al, , 1999Wang et al, 2007). The importance of developing simple method for typing HA receptor-binding selectivity was heightened by the recent outbreak of swine-origin influenza strains in humans such as the pandemic influenza A 2009 H1N1 virus (Childs et al, 2009;Itoh et al, 2009;Maines et al, 2009). Currently available receptor-characterizing assays include nuclear magnetic resonance, glycan array screening, surface plasmon resonance, hemagglutination or HA inhibition tests, thin-layer chromatography, and ELISA (Rogers and Paulson, 1983;Sauter et al, 1989;Gambaryan and Matrosovich, 1992;Suzuki et al, 1992;Takemoto et al, 1996;Alvarez and Blixt, 2006;Stevens et al, 2006a;Szretter et al, 2006;Hidari et al, 2007;Chandrasekaran et al, 2008;Mandenius et al, 2008;Srinivasan et al, 2008).…”