Disease relevance of B5R

• However, B5R-deficient vaccinia virus showed a normal localization pattern for other EEV envelope proteins [1].
• LC16m8, a highly attenuated vaccinia virus vaccine lacking expression of the membrane protein B5R, protects monkeys from monkeypox [2].
• The ps/hr gene (B5R open reading frame homolog) of rabbitpox virus controls pock color, is a component of extracellular enveloped virus, and is secreted into the medium [3].
• A rabbit antiserum was raised to the predicted external hydrophilic domain of B5R expressed in Escherichia coli and used to immunoprecipitate a M(r) 42 K protein from vaccinia-infected cells [4].
• The construction and isolation of recombinants of vaccinia virus (IHD-J strain), bearing on their outer membrane a chimeric protein consisting of the cytoplasmic and transmembrane domains of vaccinia B5R protein and the external domain of HIV envelope, has been previously described by us [5].

High impact information on B5R

• The ability of the highly attenuated vaccinia virus vaccine strain LC16m8, with a mutation in the important immunogenic membrane protein B5R, to induce protective immunity against monkeypox in nonhuman primates was evaluated in comparison with the parental Lister strain [2].
• The B5R open reading frame (ORF) encodes a membrane protein that is essential for EEV formation [6].
• Moreover, vdeltaA36R IEV labelled with EGFP fused to the B5R protein co-localized with microtubules, showing that the A36R protein is not required for the interaction of IEV with microtubules [7].
• Three of these palmitylproteins are encoded by the A33R, B5R, and F13L open reading frames and migrate by gel electrophoresis with relative molecular masses of 23-28, 42, and 37 kDa, respectively [8].
• The B5R gene encodes an EEV-specific type I membrane protein, and deletion of this gene markedly decreases EEV formation and results in a small plaque phenotype [9].

References