Science, People & Politics issn:1751598x. Issue one 2017

SCIENCE NEWS SHORTS | 22

This section is given this quarter to the Zika feature. Continued from page 21.

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE ZIKA FEATURE
[1] Characterisation of cytopathic factors through genome-wide analysis of the zika viral proteins in fission yeast.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Early edition. 3rd January, 2017. Ge Li et al. www.pnas.org/cgi/
doi/10.1073/pnas.1619735114
[2] Zika virus and birth defects - reviewing the evidence for causality,. N Engl J Med 2016; 374:1981-1987May 19, 2016 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsr1604338 Published online 13th April. 2016. New England Journal of Medicine. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr1604338?query=featured_zika
Accessed 31st March, 2017.
ACRONYMS used in the literature cited above. EMM: Edinburgh minimal medium.
GI: Gene induction.
mTOR: mammalian target of Rapamycin.
nmt1: No message in the thiamine.
NS: Non-structural (protein). In this context, non-structural means proteins not building a structure, such as the virus capsid
(outer barrier), but rather a protein involved in facilitating the viruses' activities.
YES: Yeast extract with supplements.

FURTHER READING
https://talk.ictvonline.org/ictv-reports/ictv_online_report/
Virus Taxonomy: The Classification and Nomenclature of Viruses The online 10th Report of the ICTV (2017)
ICTV is an acronym for the International Committee on vital taxonomy. Their website is https://talk.ictvonline.org Accessed 28th March, 2017.
Robert C Gallo MD
https://www.umaryland.edu/champions/robert-gallo/ Accessed 28th March, 2017.

BACKGROUND READING
Below is my selection as editor of articles for those wanting to go more deeply into the science behind the different
tools and developing knowledge sets assembled by Gallo and his colleagues in their focussed (and competitive)
effort to pry open the research field of how Zika virus proteins cause cell hypertrophy, cell death, cell dysregulation
and growth restriction in cells. These are all aspects of cell cytopathy, and they are seen in the cells of people
infected with Zika virus, though, of course, in the normal course of events cell death is simply part of a cell's life.
A: S. Pombe (2013).
Development of episomal vectors carrying a nourseothricin-resistance marker for use in minimal media
for Schizosaccharomyces pombe. First published 20th May, 2013 in Yeast. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/
doi/10.1002/yea.2955/full
B: rapamycin (2012). mTOR-Dependent Cell Survival Mechanisms
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3504431/ Cold Springs Harbor Perspectives in Biology.
C: Viral vectors (2009). Viral vectors: from virology to transgene expression.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2629647/ British Journal of Pharmacology.
D: Fission yeast growth rate.
Measuring the growth rate of fission yeast. An example of what science students do, from San Francisco State
University. http://online.sfsu.edu/pasion/bridges/Exercise12.pdf
E: Guillain-Barré syndrome. From the US NIH website.
F: Whole genome shotgun sequencing. Cold Spring Harbour oral history in which Dr Craig Venter talks of the ap
proach in the context of smallpox, and the intellectual debt he the sequencing field owe Fred Sanger.

Helen Gavaghan founded, publishes (as Gavaghan Communications) and edits Science, People & Politics (ISSN
1751 598X), working with the advice and co-operation of journalist colleagues who are co shareholders in the
dormant company owing the title, and with editorial advisors. She has worked on staff, as freelance, or on
retainer for most of the international science press, has been history consultant to the IGO, EUMETSAT and a content
consultant for the London Science Museum, and the magazine Telecommunications Development Asia Pacific,
and was editor of the international medical devices and diagnostics newsletter, Clinica, Helen Gavaghan won an
Alfred P Sloan Foundation scholarship [New York, $125,000.00 in 1992], researched and wrote an authoritative
history of early application satellites, which is published by Springer Verlag (New York). She is a former technology
news editor and Washington Correspondent of New Scientist, former UK correspondent for Paris-based Biofutur
and Le Journal Internationale de Medecin, and former Washington DC-based biomedical research policy corre-
spondent for Nature. She has as BSc hons in biophysics from the University of Leeds (1976-1980), and studied
the history of science, technology and medicine as a post graduate research student at the University of Man-
chester 2002-04.

Continued on page 22 | 22

Issue 1 (Jan-Mar), 2017............................................Science, People & Politics ISSN 1751-598X print and online