Abstract
One of the potential threats to public health microbiology in 21st century is the increased mortality rate caused by Zika virus (ZIKV), a mosquito-borne flavivirus. The severity of ZIKV infection urged World Health Organization (WHO) to declare this virus as a global concern. The limited knowledge on the structure, virulent factors, and replication mechanism of the virus posed as hindrance for vaccine development. Several vector and non-vector-borne mode of transmission are observed for spreading the disease. The similarities of the virus with other flaviviruses such as dengue and West Nile virus are worrisome; hence, there is high scope to undertake ZIKV research that probably provide insight for novel therapeutic intervention. Thus, this review focuses on the recent aspect of ZIKV research which includes the outbreak, genome structure, multiplication and propagation of the virus, current animal models, clinical manifestations, available treatment options (probable vaccines and therapeutics), and the recent advancements in computational drug discovery pipelines, challenges and limitation to undertake ZIKV research. The review suggests that the infection due to ZIKV became one of the universal concerns and an interdisciplinary environment of in vitro cellular assays, genomics, proteomics, and computational biology approaches probably contribute insights for screening of novel molecular targets for drug design. The review tried to provide cutting edge knowledge in ZIKV research with future insights required for the development of novel therapeutic remedies to curtail ZIKV infection.
Highlights
Zika virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus pertinent to West Nile virus, dengue virus (DENV), and yellow fever virus
The commercial assays and PCR-based assays accepted by the Communaute Europeenne and serological assays permitted by US Food and Administration (FDA) can be used in emergency situations (Plourde and Bloch, 2016)
As of 2016, for donors who are at risk to ZIKV infection in areas without active ZIKV transmission, the FDA advises that donation should be delayed for 4 weeks
Summary
Zika virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus (family Flaviviridae) pertinent to West Nile virus, dengue virus (DENV), and yellow fever virus. Even though the transmission of virus was reported 60 years ago in Africa, the awareness of ZIKV to cause potential threats was revealed post-Brazilian and French Polynesian outbreaks (Baud et al, 2017). The genome is 10,794 kb in length which consists of singlestranded, positive sense RNA, flanked by two non-coding regions (5 and 3 NCR) and single open reading frame (ORF) coding for a polyprotein 5 -C-prM-E-NS1-NS2A-NS2B-NS3-NS4A-NS4BNS5-3 It is further cleaved into three structural proteins such as capsid (C), envelope (E), membrane precursor (prM) and seven non-structural (NS) proteins which are essential for the replication and assembly of the virus (Faye et al, 2014; Hamel et al, 2016; Rather et al, 2017). Novel anti-ZIKV vaccines and drugs can be developed based on the knowledge of the function of glycans and proteins (Boeuf et al, 2016)
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