The most notorious virus of the Rhabdoviridae family is the Rabies (Latin for fury, madness¹) virus. Rabies is a member of the genus Lyssaviruses and is capable of infecting any mammal, giving it one of the largest host ranges of any virus ². This is because the rabies virus can use the acetylcholine receptor, which is one of the most evolutionarily conserved proteins and used by all mammals, as a receptor for viral cell entry^3,4. The use of this receptor also explains the neurotropism (targeting of the nervous system) of the virus - the acetylcholine receptor is found on neurons⁴.

Rabies is the most lethal of all human infectious diseases, with a mortality rate of nearly 100% in untreated cases⁵. In fact, there have been only 6 known cases of human recovery from rabies infection⁶. Transmission of the virus is generally dependent on vertebrate biting⁷, although a few cases of transmission due to organ transplantation have been reported⁹. The incubation period can be extremely long, ranging from days to years. Clinically, rabies causes viral encephalitis and myelitis in humans. Initial symptoms of infection include malaise, fever, or headache, which can last several days². Within days, infection progresses dramatically, with symptoms ranging from hyperactivity (also known as furious rabies) to paralysis (dumb rabies). Both furious and dumb rabies develop into complete paralysis, ultimately leading to coma, and then death. Once the clinical symptoms appear, the disease is nearly always fatal, with death usually occurring within the first seven days of the appearance of symptoms without intensive care^{7, 8} .

Fortunately, both pre-exposure and post-exposure prophylaxeis exist. Pre-prophylaxis consists of a rabies vaccine, which unlike the name suggests, does not protect against rabies infection but rather reduces the post-exposure prophylaxis that one receives following infection. Because the incubation period for rabies is so long, and the virus is slow moving once in the nervous system, it is possible to vaccinate someone against the virus after they have been exposed. This is the procedure for post-exposure prophylaxis. In the case that the patient has not been vaccinated previously, they must also receive immunoglobulin².

Vesicular Stomatitis Virus Another important member of the Rhabdoviridae family is Vesicular Stomatitis Virus (VSV). Although VSV is usually asymptomatic in humans, it sometimes causes acute febrile disease. The virus is a zoonosis, meaning humans are only infected by animals, and not other humans7. The two most common serotypes found in the Americas are VSV-I and VSV-NJ (named for Indiana and New Jersey, respectively, where the viruses were initially isolated7. VSV was also important to the study of molecular biology. In 1975, David Baltimore won the nobel prize for the discovery of RNA dependent RNA polymerase in VSV10.