Vaccinia Virus and Poxvirology

This volume provides a comprehensive source of protocols for working with poxviruses. Poxviruses are an important topic because of smallpox bioterrorism and the need to develop anti-poxvirus therapeutics and safer smallpox vaccines. The protocols cover everything from the construction, characterization, and use of recombinant viruses to methods for studying the poxvirus gene transcription and DNA replication, and poxvirus bioinformatics. Also covered are protocols involving the study of immune responses to poxvirus, which is a critical issue given their role in smallpox vaccination and their potential role as vaccine vectors directed against infectious agents and cancer, thus making this book useful for all researchers of poxvirus.