Recombinant myxoma virus lacking all poxvirus ankyrin-repeat proteins stimulates multiple cellular anti-viral pathways and exhibits a severe decrease in virulence

•Deletion of all ANK-R genes from MYXV caused robust activation of the NF-κB pathway.•Increased release of IL-6 was only observed upon infection with vMyx-ANKsKO.•Deletion of all ANK-R genes caused extensive attenuation of MYXV in rabbits.•First report on shared functions of the poxviral ANK-R protein superfamily.

Although the production of single gene knockout viruses is a useful strategy to study viral gene functions, the redundancy of many host interactive genes within a complex viral genome can obscure their collective functions. In this study, a rabbit-specific poxvirus, myxoma virus (MYXV), was genetically altered to disrupt multiple members of the poxviral ankyrin-repeat (ANK-R) protein superfamily, M-T5, M148, M149 and M150. A particularly robust activation of the NF-κB pathway was observed in A549 cells following infection with the complete ANK-R knockout (vMyx-ANKsKO). Also, an increased release of IL-6 was only observed upon infection with vMyx-ANKsKO. In virus-infected rabbit studies, vMyx-ANKsKO was the most extensively attenuated and produced the smallest primary lesion of all ANK-R mutant constructs. This study provides the first insights into the shared functions of the poxviral ANK-R protein superfamily in vitro and in vivo.