<strong>Comparison of Base Distributions in Dengue, Zika and Other Flavivirus Envelope and NS5 Genes</strong>

Abstract

IntroductionThe recent epidemic of the Zika virus in South and Central Americas have focused attention on the flavivirus group of viruses which also include all four types of Dengue virus (DENV1, DENV2, DENV3, DENV4), West Nile virus (WNV), Yellow fever virus (YFV) and Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) besides Zika virus (ZIKV). All these viruses share strong homology at the protein sequence level, and slightly weaker homology at the nucleotide sequence level [1]. Phylogenetic studies place the four DENV serotypes in one clade and, ZIKV is found to be closest to DENV2. It is therefore widely held that ZIKV and DENV2 have the closest relationship among all the aforementioned flaviviruses [2].