Herpesviruses are a large family of widely distributed viruses.
Most animal species are host to at least one, but frequently more, herpesviruses. The virions are large (~200 nm in diameter) and comprise DNA, a capsid, a tegument and an envelope.
The genome is linear, doublestranded DNA that is between 124 and 295 kilobase-pairs in length, encoding between 70 and 200 genes. All herpesviruses are able to achieve lifelong persistence by establishing latency in host cells. Other biological features common to herpesviruses include destruction of infected cells during lytic (active) infection and the occurrence of virus transcription, DNA synthesis and nucleocapsid assembly in the nucleus of infected cells. In addition, all herpesviruses encode a large array of enzymes involved in nucleic acid metabolism, DNA synthesis and protein processing (Pellett and Roizman 2013). Other biological features vary between species of herpesviruses and can be used to further classify the viruses. The Family Herpesviridae was originally divided into three Subfamilies, Alphaherpesviri- nae, Betaherpesvirinae and Gammaherpesvirinae, on the basis of their biological properties (Table 23.1). This has been shown to correlate well with classification performed on the basis of DNA sequence similarity (Pellett and Roiz- man 2013). In Australian mammals most herpesvirus studies have focussed on marsupial species in which only members of the Alphaherpesvirinae and Gammaherpes- virinae Subfamilies have been detected (Stalder et al. 2015). Viruses within the Betaherpesvirinae Subfamily infect host species within the Orders Rodentia and Chiroptera, as well as Primates, but have not been extensively studied in native Australian mammals.1.
More on the topic Herpesviruses are a large family of widely distributed viruses.:
-
Veterinarian -