RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Zika virus may not be alone: proteomics associates a bovine-like viral diarrhea virus to microcephaly
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 062596
DO 10.1101/062596
A1 Nogueira, Fabio CS
A1 Velasquez, Erika
A1 Melo, Adriana SO
A1 Domont, Gilberto B
A1 Sawa, Akira
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/15/062596.abstract
AB One Sentence Summary Proteomics analysis lead us to suspect the presence of a Bovine-like viral diarrhea virus (BVDV-like) in the brain tissue of fetuses bearing microcephaly during the outbreak in Paraiba State, Brazil, 2015.Abstract No direct experimental causal evidence confirms that the Zika virus is the sole etiological agent responsible for the development of brain malformations in human fetuses during pregnancy. We used a discovery-driven approach to analyze protein extracts of three Zika positive brains. Shotgun mass spectrometry (MS) proteomics did not identify any Zika protein in all samples. However, MS detected the presence of peptide(s) from the polyprotein of a Bovine-like viral diarrhea virus (BVDV-like) in Zika-positive brains. These results indicate that Zika virus may not be, per se, the only etiological agent responsible for microcephaly and suggests that discovery-driven approaches play an essential role in the screening of fluids or tissues for virus or other etiological agents.