MeV H

Despite the availability of highly effective vaccines, measles remains a major cause of human mortality and morbidity. The causative agent is measles virus (MV), which belongs to the genus Morbillivirus in the family Paramyxoviridae. MV causes a systemic infection by infecting several types of lymphoid and myeloid cells in the immune system and epithelia of multiple organs/tissues. MV has two types of glycoprotein spikes on the envelope, the hemagglutinin (H) and fusion (F) proteins. The H protein of MV (MV-H) binds to the receptor on a target cell and the F protein mediates membrane fusion between the virus envelope and the plasma membrane of the target cell to initiate infection.