Question

opinion paper on mutation on zika virus

Answer 1

Answer: One of the most intriguing question into Zika Virus research is that " Why a virus that was discovered and that existed for decades in a much less harmless state became more destructive and associated with Guillain-Barre syndrome in adults and microcephaly in newborn babies, reaching epidemic levels in Latin America and French Polynesia.Few of the recent reports have emphasized that a single gene mutation led to an otherwise harmless strain into a lethal devastating epidemic force.

Few groups, Xu and coworkers and Yuan et al have recently reported their findings that S139N mutation which affected a viral protein involved in making of viral protective coat and viral assembly was observed to have caused more deaths in experimental mice and severe damage to cultured human cells important to early brain development. Though these findings are yet to be extrapolated to primates for a better understanding of virus function in nature.

Another group of researchers Pei-Yong Shi and coworkers have uncovered another plausible explanation reporting their findings in Nature, that a new mutation makes it easier for viruses to infect their vector- Aedes aegypti. The team observed that the more recent viruses released much higher levels of a protein known as NS1, which has been shown to help other related viruses overcome mosquito immune defenses. The mutation in chain of amino acids that make up the protein NS1 accounts for the enhanced epidemic ability and pathogenecity of the virus. Though, the group believes that there could be more than one change in viral genome of Zika that has made it explosively epidemic.

Therefore, investigations and experiments are going on to decode the change that has enhanced the Zika potential based on single gene mutation concept, yet a lot many theories with different concepts might come up that would enable us to understand how mutations change the viral protein function and what impact it confers to the pathogenecity of virus.