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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.

Sec. Virology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1603083

This article is part of the Research TopicEmerging Arboviruses in the Americas: Epidemiology, Public Health Impact, and Future PreparednessView all 6 articles

Deficient of glycosylation site in the Envelop protein attenuated Zika virus replication in mosquito cells

Provisionally accepted
Jie  TongJie Tong1*Wen-Jing  WangWen-Jing Wang1Zi-Han  WangZi-Han Wang1Jing  LiJing Li1Sai-Ya  MaSai-Ya Ma1Mei  HeMei He1Meng-Xuan  LiuMeng-Xuan Liu1Yu - Fei  ZhanYu - Fei Zhan1Feng  JinFeng Jin1Guosheng  QuGuosheng Qu1Chunhong  YinChunhong Yin2
  • 1College of Life Sciences, Hebei University, Baoding, China
  • 2Shandong Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Shandong, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

The Zika virus (ZIKV) envelope (E) protein is critical for viral replication and host interactions.Although glycosylation of the E protein is known to influence viral infectivity and immune evasion, the specific functional roles of E protein glycosylation in ZIKV infectivity in mosquito cells remain unclear. In this study, we generated a deglycosylation mutant ZIKV with a T156I substitution in the E protein and investigated its effects on viral replication and viral-host interactions in mosquito C6/36 cells. Our results demonstrated that the T156I mutant exhibited attenuated replication compared to the wild-type virus during the early stages (0-24 hours) post-virus infection in mosquito C6/36 cells. This attenuation was associated with reduced E protein expression, which was regulated at the posttranscriptional level. RNA sequencing further revealed that the T156I mutation significantly altered virus-host interactions, particularly affecting the extracellular matrix (ECM) signaling pathway.Notably, several genes involved in the ECM signaling pathway, including THBS1, ITGAL, IL-1A, and CXCL8, were found to inhibit the T156I mutant but not the wild-type ZIKV. Structural analysis and in silico molecular docking suggested that the T156I mutation impaired the stability of the E protein dimer rather than its interactions with neutralizing antibodies. Collectively, these findings provide novel insights into the role of E protein glycosylation in ZIKV infection, and may have significant implications for anti-ZIKV strategies.

Keywords: Zika virus, E glycoprotein, Mosquito cells, ECM signaling pathway, E-dimer

Received: 07 Apr 2025; Accepted: 05 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Tong, Wang, Wang, Li, Ma, He, Liu, Zhan, Jin, Qu and Yin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Jie Tong, College of Life Sciences, Hebei University, Baoding, China

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