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Vaccinia Reporter Viruses for Quantifying Viral Function at All Stages of Gene Expression
Published on: May 15, 2014
How vaccinia virus has evolved to subvert the host immune response
Mohammad W Bahar1, Stephen C Graham, Ron A-J Chen
1Division of Structural Biology and Oxford Protein Production Facility, Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, Roosevelt Drive, Oxford OX37BN, United Kingdom.
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Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites and are some of the most rapidly evolving and diverse pathogens encountered by the host immune system. Large complicated viruses, such as poxviruses, have evolved a plethora of proteins to disrupt host immune signalling in their battle against immune surveillance. Recent X-ray crystallographic analysis of these viral immunomodulators has helped form an emerging picture of the molecular details of virus-host interactions. In this review we consider some of these immune evasion strategies as they apply to poxviruses, from a structural perspective, with specific examples from the European SPINE2-Complexes initiative. Structures of poxvirus immunomodulators reveal the capacity of viruses to mimic and compete against the host immune system, using a diverse range of structural folds that are unique or acquired from their hosts with both enhanced and unexpectedly divergent functions.
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