Any good Hantavirus reviews?

[Sami K J Kukkonen]

John (repass at mail.utexas.edu) wrote:
> Are there any good reviews on Hantaan virus out there? Or any other
> related species? I'm looking more for the molecular biology of the
> viruses, rather than the disease. Thanks. John

I think there are no good reviews specifically on the molecular 
biology of hantaviruses, but there are good reviews, though a bit old, 
on the family Bunyaviridae, which hantaviruses are a genus of. There is a 
review by Richard M. Elliott (1990), Molecular biology of the 
Bunyaviridae, Journal of General Virology, 71, 501-522 and then there is 
the Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology volume 169 (1991), 
which is solely about the Bunyaviridae family. 

There is supposed to be also some new review about bunyaviruses appearing 
soon. Perhaps it has already been published. I'm afraid I have no 
reference for it. 

Actually all that much hasn't happened in the study of the molecular 
biology of the viruses of that family since early this decade. Of course 
e.g. more hantaviruses have been found and more genome segments have been 
sequenced, for example already 5 complete hantavirus  L segments have been 
sequenced and the partial sequences of several more are known. That's 
what I've been involved with recently. So, my interest really is in the 
RNA polymerases of hantaviruses, which of course influences which 
articles I find interesting. 

One interesting article since early 1990's concering hantavirus
molecular biology is Garcin et al (1995), The 5' Ends of Hantaan Virus 
(Bunyaviridae) RNAs Suggest a Prime-and-Realign Mechanism for the 
Initiation of RNA Synthesis, Journal of Virology, 69, 5754-5762.

You should look from Medline for names like Richard M. Elliott, Daniel 
Kolakofsky, Rolf Muller, Stuart T. Nichol, Connie S. Schmaljohn, and Brian 
Hjelle. If you check articles that these peole have been involved with, 
you'll find just about all the interesting information available. The 
latter three are more specifically hanta-people than the other three, who 
have been involved with what I consider some of the most interesting 
articles on the RNA polymerases of bunyaviruses.
--
Sami