Zika virus likely circulated in Americas long before its detection
The Zika virus circulated in many regions of the Americas for several months before cases of infection were detected, according to new data from an international research team from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and several collaborating institutions. These findings, revealed today in Nature in a paper led by Pardis Sabeti of the Broad Institute and Harvard University, arise from an analysis of 174 Zika virus genomes — including the largest collection of new Zika virus genomes to date — sequenced from patient and mosquito samples collected in 11 affected countries and territories. The paper’s co-authors include Hayden Metsky, a graduate student in the Sabeti lab, MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering, and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, who is one of the paper’s first authors; Lee Gehrke, the Hermann L.F. von Helmholtz Professor in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES); and Irene Bosch, a research scientist...