PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Caio César de Melo Freire
AU  - Atila Iamarino
AU  - Daniel Ferreira de Lima Neto
AU  - Amadou Alpha Sall
AU  - Paolo Marinho de Andrade Zanotto
TI  - Spread of the pandemic Zika virus lineage is associated with NS1 codon usage adaptation in humans
AID  - 10.1101/032839
DP  - 2015 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 032839
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/11/25/032839.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/11/25/032839.full
AB  - Zika virus (ZIKV) infections were more common in the zoonotic cycle until the end of the 20th century with few human cases in Africa and Southeastern Asia. Recently, the Asian lineage of ZIKV is spreading along human-to-human chains of transmission in the Pacific Islands and in South America. To better understand its recent urban expansion, we compared genetic differences among the lineages. Herein we show that the recent Asian lineage spread is associated with significant NS1 codon usage adaptation to human housekeeping genes, which could facilitate viral replication and increase viral titers. These findings were supported by a significant correlation with growth in Malthusian fitness. Furthermore, we predicted several epitopes in the NS1 protein that are shared between ZIKV and Dengue. Our results imply in a significant dependence of the recent human ZIKV spread on NS1 translational selection.