Biography
Biography: Michael G Rossmann
Abstract
Zika virus belongs to the flavivirus family that includes dengue virus, West Nile virus, yellow fever virus and other human pathogens. The structure of dengue virus was the first flavivirus to be determined. It was accomplished by obtaining a low resolution image of the whole virus by cryoEM and determining the structure of the major capsid protein of the homologous tick-borne encephalitis virus crystallographically. When Zika started to be recognized as a major threat to humanity, cryoEM had advanced to allow us to determine the structure of Zika virus to near-atomic resolution using only cryoEM. The most important difference between dengue and Zika virus was found to be at a glycosylation site which is suspected to be involved in the recognition of molecules on the surface of potential host cells.
