Picornaviridae

For today’s post, I will talk about Picornaviridae. As their name suggests, pico means small. So picornaviruses are small but they have a large array of viruses of over 200 serotypes. I will talk about their taxonomy and 2 piconavirus genera.
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These viruses can be traced all the way back to Ancient Egyptian records of polio epidemics, but are still around and cause a menagerie of diseases today, from polio to hepatitis A to the “common cold.”

Picornaviruses contain positive sense, single-stranded RNA that is approximately 7-8 kilo bases
long. The genome is monopartite and polyadenylated at the 3’ end, but has a VPg protein at the
5’ end in place of a cap. The viral RNA is infectious and replication takes place in the cytoplasm.
The virus has an IRES (Internal Ribosomal Entry Site) which distinguishes it from many other RNA viruses. The virus is naked with an icosahedral capsid which is the smallest virus of diameter only about 27-30nm.