Zika virus induces neural progenitor cell mitotic catastrophe by depleting 1 nuclear PNKP while activating cytoplasmic CDK1 despite the DNA damage. 2 3 Malgorzata Rychlowska 1 , Abigail Agyapong 1 , Michael Weinfeld 2 , Luis M. Schang 1* 4 *corresponding author 5 6 1 Baker Institute for Animal Health and Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of 7 Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, USA 8 9 2 Department of Oncology, Division of Experimental Oncology, University of Alberta, Canada 10 11 Email 12 MR: mr783@cornell.edu 13 AA: aa845@cornell.edu 14 MW: mweinfel@ualberta.ca 15 LMS: luis.schang@cornell.edu 16 17 Keywords 18 ZIKV; congenital Zika virus syndrome; microcephaly; mitotic catastrophe; unscheduled 19 mitotic entry; cyclin dependent kinase 1; CDK1; DNA damage repair; polynucleotide 20 kinase 3’-phosphatase; PNKP; microcephaly, seizures, and developmental delay; MCSZ 21 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license available under a (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted August 29, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.27.458001 doi: bioRxiv preprint