Like other members of the Picornavirus family, FMDV is small and unenveloped, with an icosahedral capsid.

Foot-and-mouth disease causes fever and the formation of vesicles (blisters) in infected animals, which form in the mouth and on the feet and teats.

[3] The virus particle (25-30 nm) has an icosahedral capsid made of protein, without envelope, containing a positive-sense (mRNA sense) single-stranded ribonucleic acid (RNA) genome.

Once the virus is inside the host cell, the capsid dissolves, and the RNA gets replicated, and translated into viral proteins by the cell's ribosomes using a cap-independent mechanism driven by the internal ribosome entry site element.

The infected cell ends up producing large quantities of viral RNA and capsid proteins, which are assembled to form new viruses.