How Zika Harms Fetal Brains
Researchers broke down the components of the virus to find the gene that could be causing microcephaly.
The outbreak of Zika virus in Brazil in 2015, which brought the pathogen to widespread attention, came as a shock. The virus, discovered among caged monkeys in the Zika Forest of Uganda in 1947, had been presumed to be harmless to humans. Three cases were reported in 1953 in Nigeria, but no other incidents followed for more than 50 years. A 1971 study showed the virus could kill newborn mice, but that still didn’t raise concerns. “The entire world ignored this virus,” says virologist Richard Zhao of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. A 2007 outbreak in Yap, an island in the Federated States of Micronesia, was followed by others in
