Meerut: A 29-year-old doctoral student from India is the youngest member of a seven-member team of researchers that determined the structure of the Zika virus. The crucial breakthrough will help in the development of effective treatments for the deadly disease.
Devika Sirohi a student at Purdue University in the United States. “It took us four months to identify the structure of the virus,” Sirohi, who was born and brought up in Meerut, explained to The Times of India about the intense work behind the breakthrough.
The team comprised three were professors and four students. “During the period of the research, we barely slept for two to three hours a day, but our hard work finally paid off. This discovery will help doctors and researchers to find a cure for the deadly disease that has been reported in 33 countries,” she said.
Zika virus is spread by daytime-active mosquitoes. It is related to dengue, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, and West Nile viruses. Its name comes from the Zika Forest of Uganda, where the virus was first isolated in 1947.
Determining the structure of the virus was a major hurdle for researchers, and the team’s find, Sirohi added, would now make it possible to create effective anti-viral treatments and vaccines.
The team included Sirohi, postdoctoral research associates Zhenguo Chen, Lei Sun and Thomas Klose; biological sciences professor Michael G Rossmann, Purdue Institute for Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Diseases director Richard J Kuhn, and Theodore C Pierson, chief of the viral pathogenesis section of the Laboratory of Viral Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Although others were obviously involved, it is not the first time though – previously like with the gravitational waves breakthrough – that Indians together with US technology and management can achieve anything.
“When I first arrived in the US, I never expected to achieve this much. It has been five years now since I started my doctoral research and I will submit my thesis by the end of this year. The entire journey of discovering the structure of Zika was full of challenges, but all is well that ends well. Now that the structure has been determined, it will be easier to research further and combat the spread of the disease,” said Sirohi, based in West Lafayette near Chicago and pursuing PhD in ‘Structure and Maturation of Flaviviruses’.
The Meerut girl completed her schooling from the city-based Dayawati Modi Academy. She went on to pursue honors in biochemistry from Delhi University and MSc from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.
Both her parents are Meerut-based doctors; her mother, Reena, a pediatrician. Elated by her success, her father, S S Sirohi, a pathologist who lives in Delhi’s Defence Colony, said, “It is a matter of pride not only for my family, because she is my daughter, but for the whole country that an Indian was part of the team that made this breakthrough.”