Abstract
West Nile virus (family Flaviviridae, genus Flavivirus, WNV) is a small, enveloped, single stranded, positive RNA genome virus. WNV is a member of the Japanese encephalitis serogroup, which includes St Louis encephalitis virus (SLEV), Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), Murray Valley encephalitis virus (MVEV), Kunjin virus (KUNV), and Usutu virus (USUV), which have all been shown to cause disease in humans. The virion consists of an envelope and prM-M dimers surrounding an icosahedral capsid of approximately 50 nm in size (Beasley, 2005). The WNV genomic RNA is approximately 11 kb in length, and contains 10 genes within a single open reading frame (ORF) that encodes for a single polyprotein flanked by 5’ and 3’ untranslated regions (UTR). The approximately 3430 amino acid WNV polyprotein is processed by cellular proteases and by the viral NS2B-NS3 protease into 3 structural and 7 non-structural proteins (NS) (Fig. 1).
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