Structural basis for antagonism of innate immunity by poxvirus

Abstract

Vaccinia virus encodes many proteins that antagonize our innate immune system. It has been shown that some of them adopt a Bcl-2 like fold in spite of a lack of sequence identities to the Bcl-2 superfamily. Unlike viral Bcl-2 homologs that antagonize apoptosis by binding to cellular Bcl-2 targets, these viral proteins serve other functions. Despite the identification of numerous cellular targets for these proteins, there is currently little structural information regarding the protein-protein complexes formed during infection.