from Michèle Bouloy writing in Bunyaviridae: Molecular and Cellular Biology:
Phleboviruses are emerging pathogens in many countries of the world. Rift Valley fever virus which in the past, was responsible for dramatic zoonosis only in Africa, has spread to Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 2000 and other phleboviruses such as Toscana virus or sandfly fever viruses Sicilian or Naples are now widely circulating in the Mediterranean basin. Like all bunyaviruses, phleboviruses are trisegmented negative stranded RNA viruses but differ from others in having an ambisense S segment to encode the nucleoprotein and the nonstructural protein. In this review, we will present the latest advances in the understanding of structure and pathogenesis and in the recent development of reverse genetics.
Further reading: Bunyaviridae: Molecular and Cellular Biology