How Poxviruses Oppose Apoptosis

Abstract

Poxviruses express a variety of proteins that are able to modulate the innate cellular apoptotic response triggered by virus infection. Poxviruses are the only DNA viruses to replicate exclusively in the cytoplasm of infected cells, and to date, members of this family have been shown to encode a wide variety of proteins that block or delay apoptosis, including caspase inhibitors, other serpins, death domain effectors, bcl-2/CED-9 homologs, modulators of the FAS/TNF pathway, and inhibitors of PKR. It is predicted that this list of poxvirus apoptosis modulators will continue to grow in the coming years and should provide an increasingly rich and diverse family of apoptosis regulators.