Molecular epidemiology of animal virus diseases

In this review the application of methods of molecular epidemiology, particularly the combined approach of amplifying defined fragments of viral genomes using the polymerase chain reaction and subsequent nucleotide sequencing analysis, is described. Emphasis is put on examples of a fem important diseases (e.g. those caused by morbilliviruses, rhabdoviruses, pestiviruses and aphthoviruses) to demonstrate the impact of this methodology. Molecular epidemiology is already an important and very sensitive tool to study the volution of viruses at a level superior to previous methodologies and providing a better understanding of epidemiological relationships.