Poxvirus IFN Receptor Homologs Grant McFadden1,* and Richard Moyer2 1 The John P. Robarts Research Institute and Department of Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Western Ontario, 1400 Western Road, London, Ontario, N6G 2V4, Canada 2 Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of Florida College of Medicine, PO Box 100266, Gainesville, FL 32610-0266, USA * corresponding author tel: (519) 663-3184, fax: (519) 663-3847, e-mail:
[email protected] DOI: 10.1006/rwcy.2000.14014. SUMMARY The first example discovered of a viroceptor (virusencoded receptor homolog) targeted against the interferon family was the M-T7 gene product of myxoma virus, a secreted glycoprotein of 37 kDa that shares sequence similarity to the external ligandbinding domain of the cellular IFN receptor. Later, M-T7 was shown to be closely related to a variety of homologous genes in many other poxviruses that share sequence homology to the same domain of the cellular receptors. Studies have shown that these poxvirus IFN recept