INVESTIGADORES
BARBEITO ANDRES Jimena
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Exploring brain phenotypic outcomes when Zika virus and protein undernutrition interact during early development
Autor/es:
BARBEITO - ANDRÉS, J; PEZZUTO, P.; HIGA, L. M.; ALVES, AD; FERREIRA, J. C. C. G.; LOPES, R. T.; SANTOS, T. M. P.; BARBOSA, R; LENT, R.; BELLIO, M; TANURI, A; GARCEZ, P. P.
Reunión:
Congreso; 87th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (2018); 2018
Resumen:
Dysmorphologies result from modifications in particular aspects of developmental network and their study represents a window to understand the role of specific factors and the epigenetic interactions that are essential for normal morphogenesis. Recently, Zika virus (ZIKV) was linked to brain development abnormalities such as primary microcephaly, a severe reduction in brain growth. However, epidemiological reports showed that ZIKV vertical transmission prevalence varies across different geographical regions. In vivo animal studies also described different ZIKV susceptibility rates among wild-type and knockout mice. Therefore, it remains to be known the environmental or genetic co-factors that modulate the effect of congenital ZIKV infection on neuroanatomical development. Here we aimed to analyze the role of maternal nutrition as an environmental factor in the emergence of neural phenotypic dysmorphologies after ZIKV infection using a murine model. After chronic protein restriction in pregnant dams, we injected ZIKV at the peak of cortical neurogenesis. High resolution computed tomography and geometric morphometrics were used to quantify a significant reduction of skull (p<0.01), brain (p<0.001) and particularly cortex (p<0.001) size in newborn pups whose mothers were subjected to low protein diet and ZIKV. Immunostaining for neural progenitors, neurons, and microglia markers revealed that the formation of the cortical plate is restricted even prenatally, indicating that diet might play a critical role in the prevalence of ZIKV congenital syndrome phenotypes. In sum, through this study it was possible to quantitatively assess the interaction of a systemic environmental factor and ZIKV in the production of altered brain and skull phenotypes.