ZIKA - How Fast Does This Virus Mutate?

Abstract

The World Health Organisation has declared the present epidemic of infection with the Zika virus to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The virus appears to have spread from Thailand to French Polynesia in 2013, and has since infected over a million people in the countries of South and Central America. In most cases the infection is mild and transient, but the virus does appear to be strongly neurotropic and the presumptive cause of both birth defects in foetuses and Guillain-Barr&eacute syndrome in some adults. In this paper the techniques and utilities developed in the study of mitochondrial DNA are applied to the Zika virus. As a result it is possible to show in a simple manner how a phylogenetic tree may be constructed and how the mutation rate of the virus can be measured. The study shows the mutation rate to vary between 12 and 25 bases a year, in a viral genome of 10,272 bases. This rapid mutation rate will enable the geographic spread of the epidemic to be monitored easily and may also prove useful in assisting the identification of preventative measures that are working, and those which are not.

Analysis of the genetic divergence in Asian strains of ZIKA virus with reference to 2015-2016 outbreaks

“…Nucleotide variations were too numerous to discuss here. With respect to amino acid variations, structural proteins showed several variations in their sequences revealing high mutational rate of the new ZIKV strains (28). Variations observed were classified into two categories, those that were seen in all 2015-2016 samples and variations that were strain-specific.…”

Advances in research on Zika virus

“…NS3 and NS5 inhibitors from other flaviviruses, may form the basis of ZIKV intervention strategies [16] . A study showed that in a viral genome of 10 272 bases mutation rate vary between 12 and 25 bases a year [17] .…”

ZIKV Diagnostics: Current Scenario and Future Directions

“…Especially in virus presenting RNA genome, nucleotide polymorphisms have long been noted as an evolutionary mechanism and indicate viral adaptation to the host [34,35]. The mutation rate of ZIKV was demonstrated to be between 12 and 25 bases per year and corresponds to 0.2% of total ZIKV genome [36]. On top of the mutation rate, recombination events also play an important role in virus evolution.…”