The selection of A/chicken/Netherlands/14015526/2014 H5N8 (NE14) and A/Sichuan/26221/2014 H5N6 (SC14) challenge strains. (A) Phylogenetic tree of HA among 37 HPAI H5 strains using the neighbor-joining method. Newly emerging HPAI H5N2, H5N6 and H5N8 strains covered all 3 subgroups of group A and group B from various countries in Asia, Europe and North America and from various species.30 The representative strains (circled in orange) were selected for the amino acid sequence comparison. (B) Amino acid sequence alignment among selected H5 strains compared with the sequence of H5N1 A/Shenzhen/406H/2006 (SZ06) virus. The NE14 H5N8 and SC14 H5N6 strains are shown in red and blue bold font, respectively. (C) The summary of hemagglutination units (HAU), plaque forming unit (PFU), the 50% tissue culture infective dose (TCID50), and the 50% mouse lethal dose (MLD50) of the NE14 and SC14 viruses.