Identification of quercetin from fruits to immediately fight Zika

Amrita Roy; Liangzhong Lim; Jianxing Song

Zika virus with a single stranded, positive sense RNA genome of 10.7 kb belongs to the flavivirus genus, which also contains Dengue, yellow fever, West Nile, Japanese encephalitis, and tick-borne encephalitis viruses (4, 11) . Zika virus shares a high degree of sequence and structural homology with other flaviviruses particularly Dengue virus, thus resulting in immunological cross-reactivity (7). As such, Zika was proposed as the fifth member of the Dengue serocomplex. Seriously, the current Zika outbreaks are largely localized within dengue-endemic areas, it is thus possible that preexisting dengue-induced antibodies may enhance Zika infection by antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), a factor that makes the vaccine approaches extremely challenging (7). Zika genome is translated into a single ~3,500-residue polyprotein, which is further cleaved into 3 structural proteins and 7 non-structural proteins (11) . The correct processing of the polyprotein is essential for replication of all flaviviruses, which requires both host proteases and a viral NS2B-NS3 protease (NS2B-NS3pro) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) . As a consequence, the flaviviral NS2B-NS3pro has been well-established to be key targets for developing antiviral All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.