structural:summarization, stylistic:tone, structural:scholar_edition
Structure and genome

Lassa viruses are enveloped, single-stranded, bisegmented, ambisense RNA viruses. Their genome is contained in two RNA segments that code for two proteins each, one in each sense, for a total of four viral proteins. The large segment encodes a small zinc finger protein (Z) that regulates transcription and replication, and the RNA polymerase (L). The small segment encodes the nucleoprotein (NP) and the surface glycoprotein precursor (GP, also known as the viral spike), which is proteolytically cleaved into the envelope glycoproteins GP1 and GP2 that bind to the alpha-dystroglycan receptor and mediate host cell entry.