Clinical Implications of the Microscopic Structure of a Mature Zika Virus

The news on Zika virus continues to proliferate. As we witness a public health calamity unfold due to this flavivirus, one concern is the need to better understand the virus itself, particularly structural features that may relate to pathogenesis and antigenicity. Investigators from Purdue University and the National Institutes of Health examined a Zika virus strain recovered from an infected patient involved in a 2013–2014 epidemic in French Polynesia, aiming to define its cryo-electron microscopic (C-EM) structure and compare it with the structure of other flaviviruses from the Virus Pathogen Database and Analysis Resource. The mature virus strain demonstrated >99.9% amino acid identity with the strain that is responsible for the ongoing …