AfOx Travel Grant leads to breakthrough research on Zika virus in Angola

Thanks to an AfOx Travel Grant, Sarah Hill and Nuno Faria from Oxford Department of Zoology travelled to Luanda, Angola, to sequence viruses that cause severe disease. The first genomes of Zika virus detected in patients in Angola were thus sequenced. This method can help reveal the ‘family tree’ of viruses and better understand how viruses spread across the world. The researchers have now started to sequence additional viral genomes, from dengue and yellow fever, for similar studies on these viruses.