Cover illustrationsThis thesis has a strong emphasis on the battle between viruses and their hosts -how the host recognizes the enemy, and how the virus tries to evade the host defense system. However, it is not to be forgotten that viruses and their hosts have also come to an agreement, or a common understanding, if you like, during their very long co-evolution. Viruses do not wipe off their host species, and the host also lends resources to allow the virus to replicate, once in a while.
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978-90-393-6160-3Proefschrift Versie 1. Chapter 1
General IntroductionProefschrift Versie 1.indd 9 18-5-2014 18:31:54Chapter 1 10 PICORNAVIRUSES Viral diseases have long accompanied mankind. An ancient Egyptian stele dated to 1403-1365 BC depicts a man with a withered leg, a symptom rather typical to that of poliomyelitis caused by poliovirus (PV), may very well be one of the earliest documentations of a viral disease (1). Picornaviridae is a large family of human and animal pathogens comprising of 17 genera, including Enterovirus, Cardiovirus, Parechovirus, and Aphthovirus. These viruses were traditionally classified based on their pathogenicity in humans and animals, and defined as serotypes. However, with increasing advancements in sequence analysis, picornaviruses are currently grouped based on their genetic relationships. For instance, many coxsackievirus A (CVA) serotypes are split into the species Enterovirus A and C, and species Enterovirus B contains many CVB serotypes and many echoviruses. Furthermore, rhinoviruses, which cause pathology in the respiratory systems, were initially recognized as a separate genus, but have been grouped into the Enterovirus genus since their genomic sequences are known. Figure 1 represents the classification of picornaviruses according to the International Committee of Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) as of 28 February, 2014, specially featuring the genera Enterovirus and Cardiovirus.Among the large picornavirus family, the Enterovirus genus contains a large number of human pathogens. PV is the etiological agent of the paralytic disease poliomyelitis and caused large scale epidemics worldwide prior to the introduction of vaccines in the late 1950's and early 1960's, which tremendously helped to keep poliovirus under control in developed countries, but it continues to cause outbreaks in parts of the world even today. Since 1988, PV has become the subject of a global eradication campaign launched by the WHO, a multibillion dollar international operation that was intended to end in 2000 but is still not completed in 2014 (1). Othe...