Infection and transmission of Rift Valley fever viruses lacking the NSs and/or NSm genes in mosquitoes: potential role for NSm in mosquito infection.
BACKGROUND: Rift Valley fever virus is an arthropod-borne human and animal pathogen responsible for large outbreaks of acute and febrile illness throughout Africa and the Arabian echofix spring reverb Peninsula.Reverse genetics technology has been used to develop deletion mutants of the virus that lack the NSs and/or NSm virulence genes and have be