Applying infectious disease forecasting to public health: a path forward using influenza forecasting examples.

Background: Infectious disease forecasting aims to predict characteristics of both seasonal epidemics and future pandemics. Accurate and timely infectious disease forecasts could aid public health responses by informing key preparation and mitigation efforts.

Main Body: For forecasts to be fully integrated into public health decision-making, federal, state, and local officials must understand how forecasts were made, how to interpret forecasts, and how well the forecasts have performed in the past.

Male-to-Female Sexual Transmission of Zika Virus-United States, January-April 2016.

We report on 9 cases of male-to-female sexual transmission of Zika virus in the United States occurring January-April 2016. This report summarizes new information about both timing of exposure and symptoms of sexually transmitted Zika virus disease, and results of semen testing for Zika virus from 2 male travelers.

A bipartite Tobacco mosaic virus-defective RNA (dRNA) system to study the role of the N-terminal methyl transferase domain in cell-to-cell movement of dRNAs.

Plant viruses, in particular Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), are model systems to study RNA and protein trafficking in plants. Although TMV cell-to-cell transport controlled by the 30-kDa movement protein (MP) has been intensively studied, it was only recently demonstrated that the 126/183-kDa replicase proteins are also involved in cell-to-cell movement. Elucidating the role(s) of 126/183-kDa proteins in movement is complicated because these proteins have multiple functions associated with replication and gene expression.