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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		How the Zika virus enters a fetus
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:02
	Publish Date:		2016-08-27 19:00:00
	Description:		When the world realized that the Zika virus could cause birth defects, the mechanism was mystery to both the public and scientists. But researchers like Lenore Pereira of the University of California, San Francisco, in a joint effort with the University of California, Berkeley, sought answers and found two routes used by Zika to make its way to a fetus. "So we were able to isolate human cells from the placenta, and infect them with Zika virus, and show that the virus could replicate in cells that came from the placenta itself or from the fetal membranes. And the virus was very competent in growing and producing more of itself, which means that it could spread inside a placenta and across fetal membranes to infect the baby – either directly through the blood or maybe through the skin." Pereira and her team also discovered a protein common to the placental cells that Zika could infect, as well as an antibiotic that could block this interaction. For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.
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