Echovirus 18 is a member of the genus Enterovirus, family Picornaviridae, which can cause meningitis in children. Here, we report the echovirus 18 complete genome sequence, which was isolated from the cerebrospinal fluid of a child with aseptic meningitis in Hebei Province, China.

Recently, much has been learned about the molecular mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of picornaviruses. This has been accelerated by the solving of the crystal structures of many members of this virus family. However, one stage of the virus life cycle remains poorly understood: uncoating. How do these simple but efficient pathogens protect their RNA genomes with a stable protein shell an...

In many respects, picornaviruses are well suited for their proposed use as immunization vectors. However, their inherent genetic instability hinders application for prophylactic purposes. We demonstrate the improved expression and stability of a heterologous insert through a novel vector design strategy that partially replaces noncoding regulatory sequences with coding sequences for foreign gen...

During the past year, genetic studies of picornaviruses, vastly facilitated by the application of infectious picornaviral cDNAs and RNAs, have contributed to our understanding of the function of individual picornavirus polypeptides and to the genetic processes that operate in these small RNA viruses. Especially notable were the demonstrations that the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase may have a fun...

Picornaviruses cover a large family of pathogens that have a major impact on human but also on veterinary health. Although most infections in man subside mildly or asymptomatically, picornaviruses can also be responsible for severe, potentially life-threatening disease. To date, no therapy has been approved for the treatment of picornavirus infections. However, efforts to develop an antiviral t...

Fever of unknown origin (FUO) is a serious problem in the United States. An unidentified agent was cultured from the stool of an infant who presented with FUO. This virus showed growth in HFDK cells and suckling mice. Using DNase sequence-independent single-primer amplification, we identified several nucleotide sequences with a high homology to Theiler's murine encephalomyelitis virus. Nearly f...

Hepatitis A virus (HAV) is a member of the Hepatovirus genus of Picornaviridae family. HAV is a non-enveloped (naked), linear, single stranded RNA virus of an icosahedral symmetry measuring 27-32 nm in diameter (Feinstone, 1973). The infectious particle consists of capsid protein and RNA genome (Fig. 1). The buoyant density of the mature particle is 1.33g/cm3 in CsCl solutions and the sedimenta...