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Science & Tech.
Mahesh

06/11/23 11:09 AM IST

The Zika genome

In News
  • The dengue virus and its equally infamous cousin, the Zika virus, together infect up to around 400 million people every year.
  • The Zika virus and genomic studies of it have opened fascinating windows into our knowledge of the infectious disease and its relevance in the context of emerging outbreaks.
Zika Virus
  • The Zika virus is a mosquito-borne flavivirus.
  • Most infections in humans are asymptomatic or with mild symptoms, including fever, rash, and joint pain.
  • The Zika virus became notorious during the 2015-2018 outbreak that swept through the Americas.
  • The outbreak was characterised by an alarming increase in the number of microcephaly cases in newborns, prompting the World Health Organisation to declare it a public health emergency of international concern in early 2016.
  • From Africa, the Zika virus has spread to Asia, Pacific islands, to the Americas, and beyond.
  • The disease has of late been in the headlines with multiple outbreaks in the last few years in multiple Indian states, including, more recently, Kerala and Karnataka.
  • Researchers isolated the virus in 1947 from monkeys from the Zika forest in Uganda.
  • The first human cases were detected in 1952 in Uganda and Tanzania.
Sequencing of Virus
  • Researchers sequenced the complete genome first in 2007. It has more than 10,000 bases of single-stranded RNA.
  • The genome is also peculiar: it encodes for a large polyprotein, which is further cleaved into capsid, membrane precursor (prM), envelope, and seven non-structural proteins.
  • The diagnosis of a Zika virus infection is mostly through genetic testing.
  • An antibody-based test would be complicated because antibodies produced by the infection can cross-react with those of the dengue (DENV), yellow fever, and West Nile viruses.
  • As climate change helps drive the spread of vector borne diseases, and global warming brings environmental conditions that favour them to new places, our genomic technologies and such deep insights into the molecular pathogenesis of these viruses will be an important guiding light.
Source- The Hindu

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