Genetic Characterization of Zika Virus Strains: Geographic Expansion of the Asian Lineage

By Andrew D. Haddow, A. Schuh, Chadwick Y. Yasuda, M. Kasper, Vireak Heang, R. Huy, H. Guzmán, R. Tesh, Scott Weaver. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2012

748 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background Zika virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus distributed throughout much of Africa and Asia. Infection with the virus may cause acute febrile illness that clinically resembles dengue fever. A recent study indicated the existence of three geographically distinct viral lineages; however this analysis utilized only a single viral gene. Although ZIKV has been known to circulate in both Africa and Asia since at least the 1950s, little is known about the genetic relationships between geographically distinct virus strains. Moreover, the geographic origin of the strains responsible for the epidemic that occurred on Yap Island, Federated States of Micronesia in 2007, and a 2010 pediatric case in Cambodia, has not been determined. Methodology/Principal Findings To elucidate the genetic relationships of geographically distinct ZIKV strains and the origin of the strains responsible for the 2007 outbreak on Yap Island and a 2010 Cambodian pediatric case of ZIKV infection, the nucleotide sequences of the open reading frame of five isolates from Cambodia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Uganda, and Senegal collected between 1947 and 2010 were determined. Phylogenetic analyses of these and previously published ZIKV sequences revealed the existence of two main virus lineages (African and Asian) and that the strain responsible for the Yap epidemic and the Cambodian case most likely originated in Southeast Asia. Examination of the nucleotide and amino acid sequence alignments revealed the loss of a potential glycosylation site in some of the virus strains, which may correlate with the passage history of the virus. Conclusions/Significance The basal position of the ZIKV strain isolated in Malaysia in 1966 suggests that the recent outbreak in Micronesia was initiated by a strain from Southeast Asia. Because ZIKV infection in humans produces an illness clinically similar to dengue fever and many other tropical infectious diseases, it is likely greatly misdiagnosed and underreported.

Subfields: Infectious Diseases, Insect Science, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7c15b3b38f85c2bbbcc68ede0aebc8b10b6ee753

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In Infectious Diseases

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Citations in the corpus

• A Mouse Model of Zika Virus Pathogenesis (2016, background): “In the decades following its discovery, ZIKV was isolated from human patients sporadically during outbreaks in Africa and Southeast Asia (Haddow et al., 2012; Hayes, 2009), but remained obscure due to the fairly benign nature of the infection (Lazear and Diamond, 2016).”
• Zika Virus, French Polynesia, South Pacific, 2013 (2014, result): “The phylogenetic tree shows that the ZIKV that recently emerged in French Polynesia is similar to Cambodia 2010 and Yap State 2007 strains, which corroborates previous findings of an expansion of ZIKV Asian lineage (7,8).”
• Zika virus targets human STAT2 to inhibit type I interferon signaling (2016, background): “, 1952), suggesting a sylvatic mosquito-nonhuman-primate cycle of transmission similar to DENV (Haddow et al., 2012).”
• Zika Virus in Gabon (Central Africa) – 2007: A New Threat from Aedes albopictus? (2014, background): “The resulting tree topology (Figure 2) was similar to that previously obtained from the complete coding sequences, corroborating Asian and African distinct lineages [2].”
• Zika virus in the Americas: Early epidemiological and genetic findings (2016, neutral): “In April 2007, a large epidemic of Asian genotype ZIKV was reported in Yap Island and Guam, Micronesia (5, 6).”
• Zika virus infection complicated by Guillain-Barre syndrome--case report, French Polynesia, December 2013. (2014, background): “The expanding distribution area of ZIKA makes Zika fever an emerging disease [8], confirmed by the present epidemic affecting French Polynesia since October 2013, and the New Caledonian reported cases since the end of 2013 [1].”
• Rapid, Low-Cost Detection of Zika Virus Using Programmable Biomolecular Components. (2016, neutral): “3% in nucleotide sequence from isolates obtained Micronesia and Cambodia in 2007 and 2010, respectively (Haddow et al., 2012).”
• Brain Region-specific Organoids using Mini-bioreactors for Modeling ZIKV Exposure (2016, positive): “We explored a ZIKV strain of Asian lineage that exhibits over 99% amino acid sequence similarity to strains currently circulating in Brazil (FSS13025, termed ZIKVC hereafter) (Haddow et al., 2012).”
• Modified mRNA vaccines protect against Zika virus infection (2017, neutral): “The existence of two ZIKV lineages, African and Asian/American (Haddow et al., 2012) does not impact antibody neutralization substantively and thus, ZIKV is classified as a single serotype (Dowd et al., 2016a).”