Portal:Medicine/Selected article/23, 2007

Henipavirus is a genus of the family Paramyxoviridae, order Mononegavirales containing two members, Hendravirus and Nipahvirus. The henipaviruses are naturally harboured by Pteropid fruit bats (flying foxes) and are characterised by a large genome, a wide host range and their recent emergence as zoonotic pathogens capable of causing illness and death in domestic animals and humans.

Henipaviruses are pleomorphic (variably shaped), ranging in size from 40 to 600 nm in diameter. They possess a lipid membrane overlying a shell of viral matrix protein. At the core is a single helical strand of genomic RNA tightly bound to N (nucleocapsid) protein and associated with the L (large) and P (phosphoprotein) proteins which provide RNA polymerase activity during replication. (More...)