Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Evaluation of Conserved RNA Secondary Structures within and between Geographic Lineages of Zika Virus

Version 1 : Received: 28 February 2021 / Approved: 1 March 2021 / Online: 1 March 2021 (18:17:53 CET)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Nicolas Calderon, K.; Fabian Galindo, J.; Bermudez-Santana, C.I. Evaluation of Conserved RNA Secondary Structures within and between Geographic Lineages of Zika Virus. Life 2021, 11, 344. Nicolas Calderon, K.; Fabian Galindo, J.; Bermudez-Santana, C.I. Evaluation of Conserved RNA Secondary Structures within and between Geographic Lineages of Zika Virus. Life 2021, 11, 344.

Abstract

Zika virus (ZIKV), without a vaccine or no effective treatment approved as yet, have globally spread since the past century. The infection caused by ZIKV in humans has changed progressively from mild to subclinical in the last years, causing epidemics with greater infectivity, tropism towards new tissues, and other related symptoms as a product of various emergent ZIKV-host cell interactions. However, it is still unknown why or how the RNA genome structure impacts those interactions in differential evolutionary origin strains. Moreover, genomic comparison of ZIKV strains from the sequence-based phylogenetic analysis is well known, but differences from RNA structure comparisons are less known. Thus, in order to understand the RNA genome variability of lineages of various geographic distributions better, 412 complete genomes in a phylogenomic scanning were used for studying the conservation of structured RNAs. We found specific genomic regions, which highlight their patterns of conserved RNA structures at the level of inter-geographical comparisons. We have proposed these structures as candidates for further experimental validation to establish their potential role in vital functions of the viral cycle of ZIKV and their possible associations with the singularities of different outbreaks that occurred in specific geographic regions.

Keywords

Zika Virus; Phylogenomics; Viral Genomic Variability; Conserved RNA structures

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

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