Down to the Core of Poxviruses

ISTA researchers uncover the architecture of poxvirus cores. ISTA Assistant Florian Schur ( left ) and co-first authors Julia Datler and Jesse Hansen. ISTA A recent re-emergence and outbreak of Mpox brought poxviruses back as a public health threat, underlining an important knowledge gap at their core. Now, a team of researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) lifted the mysteries of poxviral core architecture by combining various cryo-electron microscopy techniques with molecular modeling. The findings, published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology , could facilitate future research on therapeutics targeting the poxvirus core. Variola virus, the most notorious poxvirus and one of the deadliest viruses to have afflicted humans, wreaked havoc by causing smallpox until it was eradicated in 1980. The eradication succeeded thanks to an extensive vaccination campaign using another poxvirus, the aptly named Vaccinia virus.