Health

The Zika-Virus really

Researchers have now decoded the structure of the Zika Virus. This helps the doctors to understand better how it can harm the fetus in the womb. Also, the vaccine development can benefit from it.

This is a picture of the Zika Virus from the area. Researchers have recorded it by means of cryo – electron microscopy. In this case, the Virus is frozen in shock, so that the structure remains intact. By the imaging process, they were able to analyze the envelope of the Virus to the level of the molecules. So, it is very similar to the Dengue Virus.

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But there are certain differences, especially in the case of a sugar containing Protein (glycoprotein) on the surface of the Virus. This slight change in Structure might be responsible for the fact that the Virus manages in the fetuses of Pregnant penetrate in the newborn Microcephaly trigger a serious damage to their genetic material, which is characterized by a malformation of the skull.

The virologists Devika Sirohi and Richard Kuhn of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana suspect. Your study you have on the 31. March in the journal “Science” published.

Overcoming the blood-brain barrier and the Placenta

“Most viruses do not reach because of the blood-brain barrier and the lock nut cake into the nervous system or in the developing fetus,” says Sirohi. It notes the Zika-to succeed, not only Virus but that the placenta – the placenta – to break through.

As the infection is exactly is not yet known. But you know, certain flaviviruses can enter into the brain: To be part of this viral species, the Japanese encephalitis Virus and the tick-borne early summer meningoencephalitis (FSME). Both trigger brain inflammation.

A child with Microcephaly. The Virus has overcome the mother’s cake and possibly the blood-brain barrier.

Hope for diagnosis and vaccination

Currently, Zika infections have occurred in more than 30 countries. Especially in Brazil and French Polynesia are particularly many children have been designed in parallel with Microcephaly are born.

Kuhn said that the knowledge about the protein structures of the Virus can be expected to help in the development of new diagnostic methods and for vaccine development. The expert for flaviviruses – including the Zika Virus had been detected in 2002 and 2003, with his fellow researchers, the structures of the Dengue and West Nile Virus.

fs/nm (dpa)