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The evolution of Zika virus from Asia to the Americas

Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 17, pages 131–139 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Zika virus (ZIKV) was once considered an obscure member of the large and diverse family of mosquito-borne flaviviruses, and human infections with ZIKV were thought to be sporadic, with mild and self-limiting symptoms. The large-scale ZIKV epidemics in the Americas and the unexpected uncovering of a link to congenital birth defects escalated ZIKV infections to the status of a global public health emergency. Recent studies that combined reverse genetics with modelling in multiple systems have provided evidence that ZIKV has acquired additional amino acid substitutions at the same time as congenital Zika syndrome and other birth defects were detected. In this Progress article, we summarize the evolution of ZIKV during its spread from Asia to the Americas and discuss potential links to pathogenesis.

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Fig. 1: ZIKV mutations and their potential links to pathogenesis and transmission.
Fig. 2: Phylogenetics and inferred transmission route of the Asian ZIKV lineage.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank E. C. Holmes (University of Sydney) for insightful discussion, X. Wang (Chinese Academy of Science) for assistance with figure preparation of virion models and M. J. Carr (University College Dublin) for proofreading the manuscript before submission. The authors apologize to all colleagues whose work they could not cite owing to space limitations. Research in the authors’ laboratory was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Project of China (No.2016YFD0500304, 2018ZX09711003, 2017FYC1200800 and 2017ZX10104001-006), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.31770190, U1702282, 81661148054, 81621005 and 81522025), the Newton Advanced Fellowship from the UK Academy of Medical Sciences to C.-F.Q. and the Taishan Scholar programme of Shandong province (ts201511056) to W.-F.S.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Virology, State Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Biosecurity, Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Beijing, China

    Zhong-Yu Liu & Cheng-Feng Qin

  2. The No. 8 People’s Hospital, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China

    Zhong-Yu Liu & Cheng-Feng Qin

  3. School of Medicine (Shenzhen), Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Zhong-Yu Liu

  4. Key Laboratory of Etiology and Epidemiology of Emerging Infectious Diseases in Universities of Shandong, Taishan Medical College, Taian, China

    Wei-Feng Shi

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  1. Zhong-Yu Liu
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C.-F.Q. researched data for the article. All authors made substantial contributions to discussions of the content and wrote the article. C.-F.Q reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.

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Correspondence to Wei-Feng Shi or Cheng-Feng Qin.

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Liu, ZY., Shi, WF. & Qin, CF. The evolution of Zika virus from Asia to the Americas. Nat Rev Microbiol 17, 131–139 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-018-0134-9

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