Even the bird flu of the early 1900s had less mystery than this virus. The bird flu if it happened today would have victims, but, it would be contained and have a limited effect on people. The Zika virus posses a threat to human beings throughout the world at the genetic level. That is unheard of.
Sometimes viruses have been known to effect fetuses, but, it is usually due to high fevers or other aspects of the illness of the mother that indirectly effects the fetus, but, this virus directly attacks the fetus. I can't help believe it can harbor inertly in the mother or more realistically effects the genetic structure of the ovum and/or sperm itself.
To think there would be a biochemical response to pregnancy that would wake up the virus is not realistic. I think it is possible in a world of possibilities, but, it isn't likely. The likely scenario is that one parent or both are genetically altered when first infected with the virus and survive the symptoms. It is the feasible scenario. This virus is a strange one and it is very threatening to the life of real people and potentially altering a generation of people.
Sometimes viruses have been known to effect fetuses, but, it is usually due to high fevers or other aspects of the illness of the mother that indirectly effects the fetus, but, this virus directly attacks the fetus. I can't help believe it can harbor inertly in the mother or more realistically effects the genetic structure of the ovum and/or sperm itself.
To think there would be a biochemical response to pregnancy that would wake up the virus is not realistic. I think it is possible in a world of possibilities, but, it isn't likely. The likely scenario is that one parent or both are genetically altered when first infected with the virus and survive the symptoms. It is the feasible scenario. This virus is a strange one and it is very threatening to the life of real people and potentially altering a generation of people.
This virus chooses a specific gene within a chromosome. It makes little sense when realizing virus due adapt or mutate, but, to a specific gene that causes microcephaly in the fetus is simply astounding.
There is a terminology known to people studying the natural world. The term is 'a specialist.' Some adaptation in nature result in a species with specific needs to survive. Those so called specialists only survive in what might be coined microenvironments. This species of virus is highly specialized. But, where the heck did it mutate to accommodate it's survival through genetic alteration of a gene or chromosome.
My sincerest hopes is that intense scrutiny of the virus and it's habitat and effects on it's host (human beings) will result in a more reasonable understanding and more classic in definition to previous outbreaks of a virus. Otherwise, we are looking at specialization of a virus that literally can PLAN to eliminate a species through dysfunction of genetic viability.
The thing is this. Virus only have RNA. It needs DNA in order to replicate and spread. Virus are known to be some of the most vicious forms of life on Earth. People have developed vaccines to prevent virus from being viable in a human body's defense mechanism. We saw a retrovirus in HIV. Retrovirus have proven to be a mutation that insures it's survival far better than a virus simply carrying RNA.
A retrovirus has a scientific classification named retroviridae. It is a family of enveloped viruses that replicate in a host cell through the process of reverse transcription. Reverse transcription is using the RNA but in transcribing it in a reverse mechanism. That is a fairly vicious mutation. HIV has taken the lives of many people. It is delivered through sexual contact. So, the idea a virus can become vicious in a way that is sexually transmitted is not unusual.
HIV attached itself as a vicious species to the human immune system in a very specific way, attacking T cells. That is still a mutated virus within the understanding the adaptation for success in viral survival is not genetic. HIV is a specialist virus. It still uses mostly known methods existing of all other virus. Zika is a highly specialized virus.
The fact virus use genetic replication for their survival it almost makes too much sense the human genome will be adapted to thrive as a virus and yet end the survival of the host. It also makes sense the next generation of hosts are the ones that will be the last generation because of the attack on the brain. The human genome in adults are already established, it is only the genome that is not yet developed that can be effected.
In thinking about human survival it is the brain that insures it. Human beings have joined together as communities to survive on Earth. The brain being the place where survival is attributed, it is that part of the human genome that must be very dominant in gene EXPRESSION. So, if a virus became very specialized and seeking out DNA, it almost shows how the virus latched onto a dominant gene. A dominant gene would be more outstanding as a place to accommodate a specialist.
Is Zika reasonably considered a mutant and not a designer virus? Yes. It is possible, but, wow what a threat for human survival this virus is AND to realize this is happening with the human genome raises the possibility of more specialists.
This is going to sound self-serving, but, it is my observation and not a calculation.
The climate crisis was always believed to allow the adaptation of virus, fungus and bacteria. The climate crisis changes the SATP (standard ambient temperature and pressure). What that understanding means is there can be new microscopic response and mutation, even with the most minor changes in climate. If that is what the Zika forest is accommodating, it is important to understand the changes in that small climate space of that forest that is incubating these very dangerous virus to prevent further outbreaks of even more dangerous virus through mutation and adaptation.
Zika virus has to be an alarm and a wake up call to what we are doing to our climate and what exactly it means to human survival.
If a specialist virus can scan over the human genome and find a dominant gene such as those in gene expression that produce the human brain, what then is next? What is next is a more intensely specialized virus that will springboard into more minor gene expression. What organ system will be effected by the next generation of specialized virus? This has to be the end of such adaptation and mutation. Viral mechanism that allows mutation has to be understood.
February 23, 2016
By Sabrina Tavernise
Health authorities in the United States (click here) said they were investigating 14 new reports of the Zika virus possibly being transmitted by sex, including to pregnant women. If confirmed, the unexpectedly high number would have major implications for controlling the virus, which is usually spread by mosquito bites.
Scientists had believed sexual transmission of Zika to be extremely rare. Only a few cases have ever been documented.
“We were surprised that there was this number,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, the deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview. “If a number of them pan out, that’s much more than I was expecting.”...
