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How much does a mouse eat per day? If a researcher is conducting dietary studies, the answer is very important. For instance, obesity studies require accurate measures of feeding. Existing automated methods for taking feeding measurements are expensive and use specialized caging that is not compatible with typical vivarium colony racks. As a result, many researchers simply weigh food each day or two to determine how much food the mice ate. This is time-consuming, can be error prone, and provides a low temporal resolution view of feeding.

Bag6 (BCL2 associated athanogene 6) is a multifunctional chaperone involved in tail anchored protein biogenesis, endoplasmic reticulum-associated protein degradation, and degradation of mislocalized membrane proteins. It is the central component of a stable three chaperone complex that also contains two cofactors-Ubl4A and Trc35. This complex acts in conjunction with the co-chaperone SGTA to channel proteins bearing an exposed hydrophobic segment in the cytosol to avoid protein aggregation.

The invention concerns novel capsid-free AAV vectors that can be used for gene delivery and gene therapy applications. The invention provides for a linear nucleic acid molecule comprising in this order: a first adeno-associated virus (AAV) inverted terminal repeat (ITR), a nucleotide sequence of interest, and a second AAV ITR, wherein said nucleic acid molecule is devoid of AAV capsid protein coding sequences. The said nucleic acid molecule can be applied to a host at repetition without eliciting an immune response.

Influenza virus is a major public health concern, causing up to 500,000 deaths annually. The current strategy of reformulating vaccines annually against dominant circulating strains leads to variable protective efficacy and is unlikely to protect against novel influenza viruses with pandemic potential. Thus, there is a great need for a vaccine that provides “universal” protection against influenza viruses.

Zika virus (ZIKV) is a flavivirus transmitted by mosquitos that is strongly linked to neurological complications including Guillain-Barré syndrome, meningoencephalitis, and microcephaly. The association between active ZIKV infection during pregnancy and microcephaly and intrauterine growth retardation in the fetus has been confirmed in murine models of ZIKV infection.

Many members of the Flaviviridae family are emerging and reemerging human pathogens that have caused outbreaks of devastating and often fatal diseases and represent a serious public health problem on a global scale. There is no single attenuation strategy that exists which is sufficient to prepare a safe, efficacious and immunogenic live attenuated virus vaccine that will work universally for Flaviviridae.

An arthropod-borne virus, Zika virus (ZIKV), has recently emerged as a major human pathogen. Associated with complications during perinatal development and Guillain-Barré syndrome in adults, ZIKV raises new challenges for understanding the molecular determinants of flavivirus pathogenesis. This underscores the necessity for the development of a reverse genetic system based on an epidemic ZIKV strain. This technology relates to the generation and characterization in cell cultures of an infectious cDNA clone of ZIKV isolated from the 2015 epidemic in Brazil.

Summary – The invention includes compounds and compositions for inhibiting phosphoglycerate mutase (PGM) activity. In some examples, the compounds selectively inhibit cofactor-independent PGM (iPGM). In particular embodiments, the compounds include one or more cyclic peptides.

This application claims live attenuated Zika viruses and vaccines, attenuated chimeric Zika viruses and vaccines, and multivalent immunogenic compositions comprising Zika vaccines and vaccines for other flaviviruses. The chimeric Zika viruses claimed include a first nucleotide sequence encoding at least one structural protein from a Zika virus (ZIKV), a second nucleotide sequence encoding at least one nonstructural protein from a first flavivirus, and a third nucleotide sequence of a 3' untranslated region from a second flavivirus.