Ultrastructure of Zika virus particles in cell cultures

Abstract

Zika virus (ZIKV) has infected thousands of Brazilian people and spread to other American countries since 2015. The introduction of ZIKV brought a strong impact to public health in Brazil. It is of utmost importance to identify a susceptible cell line that will enable the isolation and identification of the virus from patient samples, viral mass production, and testing of drug and vaccine candidates. Besides real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction diagnosis for detecting the viral genome, virus isolation in cell lines was useful in order to study the structure of the viral particle and its behaviour inside cells. Analysis of ZIKV infected cell lines was achieved using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Blood was obtained from a Brazilian patient during the first days after presenting with signs of the disease, and ZIKV from the patient’s blood was isolated in the C6/36 mosquito cell line. Afterwards, Vero cells were inoculated with the viral suspension, fixed six days after inoculation, embedded in polymers, and ultra-thin cut. Like dengue viruses, this flavivirus showed numerous virus particles present inside cellular vesicles thereby confirming the susceptibility of the Vero cell line to ZIKV replication. TEM is a unique technique available to make the virus visible.

Zika virus induced cellular remodelling

“…Both control cells (Figure S2A‐B) and virus‐infected cells (Figures b, S2C‐D) contained numerous multivesicular bodies and multilamellar myelin‐like bodies. Although previous reports have suggested that these might be specific to ZIKV infection (Barreto‐Vieira, Barth, & Alexandre, ), the quantity and character of these two cellular components did not appear to be altered by infection in our experiments.…”

Cytoarchitecture of Zika virus infection in human neuroblastoma and Aedes albopictus cell lines

“…The ultrastructure of a number of vector-borne flaviviruses has been well-studied (18–25). There have been recent reports examining ZIKV infection in human skin cells (26) and African green monkey kidney cells (27). In addition papers have depicted ZIKV replication in cells of neural origin (28, 29).…”

Microscopy analysis of Zika virus morphogenesis in mammalian cells

“…However, ZIKV morphogenesis remains controversial. Although it was previously shown to share similarities with the DENV cellular cycle 18 , ZIKV morphogenesis revealed differences from other members of its family. Additionally, the infection presents distinct dynamics in vertebrate and invertebrate cells, e.g., the presence of syncytia, which occurs only in C6/36-infected cells 19 .…”