Given the recent interest in monkeypox, here's a few things that people should know about poxviruses from a virologist point of view (1/14) Virologists classify Poxviruses as a kind of large DNA virus in the kingdom "Bamfordvirae" (no known relation) alongside other animal viruses like adeno- and asfari-viruses, all of which have a protein with a "double jelly roll" fold.

Thanks to help in Glasgow on this paper + collaborators Juan Mendoza/Chris Garcia for protein modelling in Stanford and Shuahua Fan and Sarah Tishkoff in Pennsylvania for human genetics analysis ⁦@SarahTishkoff⁩ thanks to all the students who helped journals.plos.org/plospathogens/… Paper lowdown thread: Half human population makes this interferon known as interferon lambda 4 and half don’t. If you make it you are less likely to clear hepatitis c virus Infection which is strange for an antiviral signalling molecule...