RVFV Gn

Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is an arbovirus endemic to Africa and the Arabian peninsula that causes recurrent epidemics and epizootics. RVFV is of both agricultural and biomedical importance, as infection of livestock results in high incidences of neonatal mortality and zoonosis; human disease ranges from mild self-limiting febrile illness to severe disease characterized by hemorrhagic diatheses, encephalitis, and ocular pathologies. Like all known phleboviruses, RVFV is enveloped and contains a single-stranded, negative- or ambi-sense RNA genome that is divided into three segments: S, M, and L. The M segment encodes the glycoprotein precursor, which is processed into two membrane-anchored glycoproteins, Gn and Gc. The multi-domain phleboviral Gn is structurally distinct and exhibits partial secondary structure similarity with the Gn of hantaviruses and the E1 of alphaviruses.