ABSTRACT
Vaccinia virus (VACV) is the prototype species for the Orthopoxvirus (OPXV) genus. Vaccinia virus, like monkeypox (MPXV) and cowpox virus (CPXV) are zoonotic viral agents capable of causing disease in man. VACV is a DNA virus that replicates in the cell cytoplasm of vertebrate cells and has a wide host range. There has been speculation as to the origin of VACV; possibly originally isolated from horses [1], but is rarely encountered in nature currently [2]. The adoption of VACV in the ght against smallpox resulted in the eradication of smallpox in 1977, an important milestone for medicine [3]. In the course of this achievement, VACV became the rst animal virus to be seen by microscopy, the rst to be grown in tissue culture and titrated, as well as the rst to be physically puried and chemically analyzed. To this day, VACV has been pivotal in our understanding of infectious disease, immunity, and pathogenesis. In recent decades, VACV has also become a hallmark laboratory tool, for recombinant gene expression, and for the production of second-generation vaccines expressing foreign genes.
