Abstract
African swine fever virus particles have a size of about 200 nm and a lipoprotein envelope surrounding an 80 nm virus core.The virus contains 30–40 proteins,which include many enzymes able to synthesize,cap,methylate and polyadenylate functional messenger RNA.The African swine fever virus genome is a noninfectious double-stranded DNA molecule of about 170,000 base pairs. At both termini the two DNA strands are covalently linked by a partially base-paired hairpin loop into a single polynucleotide chain.The virus particle can synthesize in vivo functional virus mRNAs in the absence of protein biosynthesis. One of the major biological problems posed by African swine fever virus-infected animals is that the virus-specific antibodies are not neutralizing. A possibility that may account for this atypical immune response is antigenic variability, that has been made clear by a comparison of the binding properties of a collection of monoclonal antibodies to different African swine fever virus field isolates. The presence in African swine fever virus DNA of several multigene families, a finding not reported for any other virus, may be related to the ability of African swine fever virus to evade the immune system.
Published Version
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