Repair of Viral Genomes by Base Excision Pathways: African Swine Fever Virus as a Paradigm

© 2011 The Author(s). ; African swine fever virus (ASFV) is an enveloped deoxyvirus that infects suids and causes a fatal disease in domestic pigs. ASFV also propagates in ticks of the genus Ornithodoros, being the only known DNA arbovirus. Because of its unique features, ASFV is the sole member of the Asfaviridae family (Salas 1999; Dixon and Chapman 2008), although comparative genome analyses suggest that ASFV shares a common origin with the members of the proposed nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs), along with poxviruses, iridoviruses and mimivirus, among others (Iyer et al. 2001; Iyer et al. 2006). ; This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (grant nº AGL2010-22229-C03-02) and by an institutional grant from Fundación Ramón Areces.