As questions about mosquito-borne Zika virus continue to mount, researchers are trying to find out how much damage Zika might do in the United States and what can be done to try to stop it.
CNN reports on one such research project at the Galveston National Laboratory: “At a lab in Texas, a scientist pipettes 3 milliliters of sheep's blood into a tiny bowl, heats it to 98.6 to replicate the temperature of human blood, and spikes it with the dreaded Zika virus. After covering the dish with a thin plastic film to simulate human skin, he unleashes dozens of mosquitoes and lets the bugs have at it. And have at it they do. They eat until they're full, their bellies engorged with blood.”
Scott Weaver, scientific director of the lab, told CNN. "There's a lot of work gearing up very fast."
As CNN noted, the stakes are high: Nearly 4,000 babies with a birth defect called microcephaly have been born in Brazil to mothers infected with the Zika virus. These babies have small heads and abnormal brain development, and so far, 46 have died in there.
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Source: CNN