Researchers find two Zika virus proteins related to microcephaly

Researchers from the University of Southern California said on 11th this month that they have found two Zika virus proteins related to microcephaly, stepping one small step further towards preventing pregnant women with infection of Zika virus from giving birth to babies with microcephaly. They conducted related research using recombinant rat proteins and recombinant horse proteins.

The study is published in the new issue of the US journal Cell Stem Cell. As one of study leaders and assistant professor at the University of Southern California, Zhao Zhen said that the goal of this study is to find the molecular mechanism of Zika virus inhibiting brain development that is to analyze which Zika virus protein can kill or inhibit the neural stem cells. Zika virus is relatively small virus which only contains 10 proteins. They found that NS4A and NS4B proteins may be associated with microcephaly.

Zhao Zhen said that the two proteins are capable of regulating so-called Akt-mTOR signal pathway within the cells and inhibit human embryonic neural stem cell proliferation and differentiation, and they can also improve autophagy function of cells to accelerate replication of Zika virus, which may lead to microcephaly. "This is only the first step we have taken," he said, "According to the available data, we can only conservatively say that these two proteins are likely to be associated with microcephaly. To prove how they result in microcephaly, there are many experiments to do."

As for the significance of this discovery, he said that this is the first report of discovering Zika virus protein related to microcephaly, providing a target goal for future head disease prevention and treatment research. But there is still a long way to go to the clinical application. He noted that in the view of prevention, Zika vaccine may be the most viable option. As for whether these two proteins are also associated with other birth defects, it is still unclear. Flarebio provides you with good-quality recombinant proteins including recombinant Cdh9.