Abstract
Human life has been at the edge of catastrophe for millennia due diseases which emerge and reemerge at random. The recent outbreak of the Zika virus (ZIKV) is one such menace that shook the global public health community abruptly. Modern technologies, including computational tools as well as experimental approaches, need to be harnessed fast and effectively in a coordinated manner in order to properly address such challenges. In this paper, based on our earlier research, we have proposed a four-pronged approach to tackle the emerging pathogens like ZIKV: (a) Epidemiological modelling of spread mechanisms of ZIKV; (b) assessment of the public health risk of newly emerging strains of the pathogens by comparing them with existing strains/pathogens using fast computational sequence comparison methods; (c) implementation of vaccine design methods in order to produce a set of probable peptide vaccine candidates for quick synthesis/production and testing in the laboratory; and (d) designing of novel therapeutic molecules and their laboratory testing as well as validation of new drugs or repurposing of drugs for use against ZIKV. For each of these stages, we provide an extensive review of the technical challenges and current state-of-the-art. Further, we outline the future areas of research and discuss how they can work together to proactively combat ZIKV or future emerging pathogens.
Highlights
“How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfast with their kinfolk and the same night supped with their ancestors in the world!”
These authors carried out quantitative analysis of Zika virus (ZIKV) evolution, nucleotide substitution rate, and the time to the most recent common ancestors
These include miscarriage, severe microcephaly, and other fetal brain defects, lasting tissue damage in brain, eye damage [20,21]. Another complication of ZIKV infection is its association with the Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS), a neurological disorder [22,23]
Summary
The Zika Virus (ZIKV) was first isolated in 1947 from a rhesus monkey in the Zika forest of Uganda [1]. Regarding the spread of ZIKV from Africa to Asia, Liang et al [7] put forward an interesting idea about this process based on mathematical modeling These authors carried out quantitative analysis of ZIKV evolution, nucleotide substitution rate, and the time to the most recent common ancestors (tMRCAs). Based on their results these authors concluded that a “global dissemination of ZIKV spread was likely to have originated from Africa, followed by eastward transmission to south-eastern Asia, Oceania, South America, Caribbean, and Central America.”. It should be mentioned that WHO later relaxed this warning subsequently in the November of 2016
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