Preliminary structural proteome of the monkeypox virus causing a multi-country outbreak in May 2022

Abstract

Abstract The monkeypox virus (MPX) belongs to the orthopoxvirus genus of the Poxviridae family, is endemic in parts of Africa, and causes a disease in humans similar to smallpox. The most recent outbreak of MPX in 2022 is already affecting 19 countries on different continents and has consequently become a focus of interest. In particular, a molecular understanding of the virus is essential to study infection processes and pathogen-host interactions, predict tropism changes, or guide drug development and discovery as well as vaccine development or adaptation at a very early stage. Herein we present a study of the structural genome of the currently emerging MPX virus: our analysis revealed 10,043 characteristic candidate open reading frames (ORFs), and a subsequent BLAST search of the non-redundant protein database and PDB reduced the number of suspected ORFs to 925 and 123 protein sequences, respectively. Finally, we provide the 3D structures of these 123 protein sequences, which were predicted by homology modeling and are available for download.