Molecular biology of fish viruses: a review.

The goal of this review is to present some of the recent molecular aspects in the fish virus studies. Although more than 50 different fish virus have been isolated and tissue-culture adapted, very few of them have been molecularly cloned and sequenced. Five virus families have been mostly studied: Birnaviridae, the prototype being the infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNV), and the channel catfish virus (CCV) belonging to the Herpesviridae family. In the Iridoviridae family, the fish lymphocystis disease virus (FLDV) is the most studied. Retroviridae have been recently isolated and studied. The last family is the Rhabdoviridae, in which infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) and viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV) have been extensively studied.