Scientists now have the genetic blueprints of more than 2,000 human and avian flu viruses at their fingertips in a public database that could speed the development of new diagnostic tests, treatments and vaccines.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases yesterday announced the milestone achieved by Influenza Genome Sequencing Project, of which Elodie Ghedin, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, is a co-director.

Prior efforts to decode, or "sequence" in scientific terms, influenza virus genomes tended to focus on two genes for surface proteins, which are typically used as targets for vaccine development and treatments, she said.

But much more can be learned about the viruses by examining the entire genome, which consists of eight segments that make 11 proteins, Dr. Ghedin noted.

"With the little we've sequenced so far, we've already completely changed our understanding of how these viruses evolve and interact with each other, " she said.

Soon after the project began in 2004, the researchers "made a really big discovery," as Dr. Ghedin put it. They found that influenza viruses could carry the same surface proteins, but otherwise be very different.

If such strains met in an infected individual, they could "start to shuffle the genes around and create new strains that can evade the vaccine effect," she said.

And, instead of concentrating on newly emergent viruses or those that seem particularly virulent, researchers are able to find out more about the garden-variety types, too.

"We don't know what is normally present in a population" and how the viruses might change during a typical flu season, Dr. Ghedin said. Many other research questions could be asked and answered.

"You could try sequencing samples from a population that never get vaccinated," she said. "Does it look different from a population that gets vaccinated?"

Technology advances have made efficient sequencing possible. The project currently decodes the genomes of about 200 influenza strains per month.

All the sequencing findings are made available on a public, Internet-accessible database immediately. In the past, researchers guarded their work closely and years could pass before it became widely available.

But in the project, which is funded for another year, "Everything goes [online] as soon as it's generated," Dr. Ghedin said. "We can start analyzing the data at the same time as everybody else in the world."

That accessibility has drawn experts from other fields into contributing their knowledge, she added.