Dengue fever virus

Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]

Synonyms and keywords: DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3 and DENV-4

For the disease Dengue fever, click here

Overview

The dengue virus genome contains about 11,000 nucleotide bases, which code for the three different types of protein molecules (C, prM and E) that form the virus particle and seven other types of protein molecules (NS1, NS2a, NS2b, NS3, NS4a, NS4b, NS5) that are only found in infected host cells and are required for replication of the virus. There are five strains of the virus, of which the first four are referred to as DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3 and DENV-4. The distinctions between the serotypes is based on the their antigenicity.