RT Journal Article SR Electronic(1)YR 2019 T1 Developing a pseudotype model to test infectivity among different Zika virus mutants JF Access Microbiology, VO 1 IS 10 OP SP 85 DO https://doi.org/10.1099/acmi.imav2019.po0007 PB Microbiology Society, SN 2516-8290, AB Viral infections pose a massive threat to the public health; recently several viral outbreaks had occurred across the globe, including Ebola virus, Middle East respiratory syndrome and Zika virus (ZIKV). ZIKV had great importance due to the appearance of malformation and neurological syndromes in newborns. One of the things that are worth noting is that ZIKV has been present in nature since the second half of the 1900s but only until the outbreak of 2015 in Brazil it gained a prominent spot in the public health surveillance. The main goal of the project was to develop a suitable method to test different mutations that occurred naturally throughout several outbreaks of the virus across the globe, with particular emphasis in the Asian and American epidemics between 2007 and 2016. To achieve the objectives, the strategy previously used in other viruses known as pseudotyping was proposed. Pseudotyping poses a safe alternative to life virus work due to the lack of a productive infectious cycle, the use of a retroviral backbone supplemented with the glycoprotein of interest has been used in hazardous viruses such as Ebola or Hepatitis C. This system also allows to test individual mutations and the impact in the infectivity of the virus discarding any other accessory protein within the wild type virus. HIV-1 and MLV backbones were tested using a matrix of different ratios of glycoprotein and retrovirus plasmid to find the best set of concentrations; different cell lines were also tested, and protein expression viral proteins were detected., UL https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/acmi/10.1099/acmi.imav2019.po0007