Vesicular stomatitis virus

Vesicular stomatitis Indiana virus (VSIV) (often still referred to as VSV) is a virus in the family Rhabdoviridae; the well-known rabies virus belongs to the same family. VSIV can infect insects, cattle, horses and pigs. It has particular importance to farmers in certain regions of the world where it can infect cattle. This is because its clinical presentation is identical to the very important foot and mouth disease virus.

The virus is zoonotic and leads to a flu-like illness in infected humans.

It is also a common laboratory virus used to study the properties of viruses in the family Rhabdoviridae, as well as to study viral evolution.

Properties

VSIV is an arbovirus. Natural VSIV infections encompass two steps, cytolytic infections of mammalian hosts and transmission by insects. In insects, infections are noncytolytic persistent. One confirmed vector of the virus is the phlebotomine sand fly Lutzomyia shannoni.

Vesicular stomatitis Indiana virus (VSIV) is the prototypic member of the genus Vesiculovirus of the family Rhabdoviridae. The genome of the virus is a single molecule of negative-sense RNA that encodes five major proteins: G protein (G), large protein (L), phosphoprotein, matrix protein (M) and nucleoprotein. The genome is 11,161 nucleotides long.