The last few years have witnessed significant expansion of the simian cytomegalovirus (CMV) model of human CMV (HCMV) infection. Progress in the utilization of the simian CMV models has been highlighted by a better understanding of natural history, development of species-specific reagents and techniques, sequencing of several viral genomes, and generation of a bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) containing a full-length CMV genome. This work has demonstrated that, not only is there strong conservation of genomic organization and coding content, but also that the simian CMV exhibit significant parallels to HCMV in the course of viral infection in both immunocompetent hosts and those without a fully functional immune system. A wide range of experimental approaches into the molecular biology of HCMV, mechanisms of HCMV persistence and pathogenesis, and the design of novel treatment and prevention strategies are now possible in different non-human primate (NHP) models.
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