[The Svedberg seminar] – Defining Zika virus disease in maternal-fetal infection
March 23, 2026 @ 15:15 – 16:15 CET
Jenny Go
Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Minnesota, USA
Bio
Dr. Go is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Minnesota where her research program is focused on understanding innate immune and inflammatory responses in the control of viral infection. She was awarded a PhD from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she studied enveloped viral glycoproteins of SARS-CoV and avian H5N1 influenza virus. She completed postdoctoral training at the University of Washington in the Microbiology Department pursuing a systems biology approach to study virus-host interactions and the application of omics technologies toward infectious disease research.
Defining Zika virus disease in maternal-fetal infection
Zika virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-borne neuroinvasive virus that was responsible for the 2015-2016 large-scale epidemic impacting over 80 countries globally. It remains a significant public health threat due to its capacity to trigger widespread, multifactorial outbreaks and severe fetal health outcomes, including neurologic malformations at birth. We have used a macaque model of maternal-fetal ZIKV transmission to study virus-host interactions that underlie fetal disease and found that prenatal ZIKV exposure led to disruption of fetal myelin, with extensive downregulation in gene expression for key components of oligodendrocyte maturation and myelin production. The molecular features of ZIKV-induced brain injury were evaluated in mixed neural cultures at single-cell resolution and we identified astrocytes as important innate immune cells, while neural stem cells supported high levels of viral replication. Our findings reinforce the serious nature of ZIKV infection during pregnancy and the need for effective drugs or vaccines to prevent ZIKV congenital infection.
Host: Jan Komorowski jan.komorowski@icm.uu.seUU
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