The influenza B virus hemagglutinin head domain is less tolerant to transposon mutagenesis than that of the influenza A virus

To determine if the influenza B virus HA is under constraints that limit its antigenic variation, we performed a transposon screen to compare the mutational tolerance of the currently circulating influenza A virus HAs (H1 and H3 subtypes) and influenza B virus HAs (B/Victoria87 and B/Yamagata88 antigenic lineages). A library of insertional mutants for each HA was generated and deep sequenced after passaging to determine where insertions were tolerated in replicating viruses. RNA-seq of influenza virus HA libraries