Bovine ephemeral fever

Bovine ephemeral fever (BEF) also known as Three Day Sickness is an arthropod vector-borne disease of cattle and is caused by the Ephemerovirus virus of the Rhabdoviridae family of virus. The Rhabdoviridae are a class V virus according to the Baltimore classification of viruses. The BEF virus is a bullet or cone shaped virion which consists of a negative, single stranded RNA genome with a lipid envelope and 5 structural proteins. The envelope glycoprotein G contains type-specific and neutralizing antigenic sites. Theres has been recent evidence which demonstrated that the BEF virus induces apoptosis in several cell lines. It was however shown that apoptosis could be blocked by the caspase inhibitor (Z-VAD-fmk), indicating that bovine ephemeral fever virus induces caspase-dependent apoptosis in cultured cells.