Genome Sequence of a Candidate World Health Organization Reference Strain of Zika Virus for Nucleic Acid Testing

Jan-Hendrik Trösemeier; Didier Musso; Johannes Blümel; Julien Thézé; Oliver G Pybus; Sally A Baylis

doi:10.1128/genomeA.00917-16

Genome Sequence of a Candidate World Health Organization Reference Strain of Zika Virus for Nucleic Acid Testing

Genome Announc. 2016 Sep 1;4(5):e00917-16. doi: 10.1128/genomeA.00917-16.

Authors

Jan-Hendrik Trösemeier¹, Didier Musso², Johannes Blümel³, Julien Thézé⁴, Oliver G Pybus⁴, Sally A Baylis⁵

Affiliations

¹ Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, Langen, Germany Molecular Bioinformatics, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
² Institut Louis Malardé, Tahiti, French Polynesia.
³ Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, Langen, Germany.
⁴ Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
⁵ Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, Langen, Germany sally.baylis@pei.de.

Abstract

We report here the sequence of a candidate reference strain of Zika virus (ZIKV) developed on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO). The ZIKV reference strain is intended for use in nucleic acid amplification (NAT)-based assays for the detection and quantification of ZIKV RNA.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the grant "Sicherheit von Blut(produkten) und Geweben hinsichtlich der Abwesenheit von Zikaviren" from the German Ministry of Health (S. A. Baylis, J.-H. Trösemeier, J. Blümel). This study was made possible by the generous support of the American people through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats Program-2 PREDICT-2 (cooperative agreement no. AID-OAA-A-14-00102; J. Thézé, O. Pybus). The contents are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the U.S. government.