CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Introduction: Zika virus (ZIKV) is a member of the Flaviviridae family mostly transmitted by Aedes aegyptimosquitoes. Currently, there is no specific medicine or vaccine for ZIKV. A number of more serious symptomshave become associated with ZIKV infection. Notably, ocular complications due to ZIKV infection remains amajor public health concern because of their ability to cause visual impairment or blindness. Most of theprevious studies have shown ZIKV-induced ocular pathology in the posterior segment (i.e., retina) of the eye.The human retinal pigment epithelium cells (RPE), the supporting tissue of the retina, consists of a monolayerof epithelial cells that contributes to the retinal-blood barrier. The permissiveness of the RPE to viral infectionsmakes it a pertinent tissue to study host-cell interactions Mitochondria form a network distributed through thecell. These are dynamics organelles that constantly change their morphology, length and movement alongcytoskeleton. Fusion and fission are the two key events responsible for the maintenance of a proper numberof functional mitochondria. An imbalance between both processes led to many pathophysiological outcomes.Objective: In the present study, we study the mitochondria dynamics and membrane potential (Δφm) in humanRPE (ATCC ® CRL-2302 ?) cells infected with ZIKV virus strains from Puerto Rico (ZIKV-PR) or Argentina(ZIKV-AR). Methodology: ARPE-19 cells were infected with both ZIKV strains for 24 hours. Mitotracker RedCMXRos, a red-fluorescent probe that stains mitochondria in live cells and its accumulation is dependentupon membrane potential (Δφm). Results: ZIKV-PR reduced the population of cells with tubular mitochondria(34%; p