noun

• Any of a group of large DNA viruses that cause smallpox and similar infectious diseases in vertebrates.

  ‘The vaccine is freeze-dried, live vaccinia virus, a poxvirus related to smallpox virus.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Bacteriophage is a tailed, double-stranded DNA virus that serves as an important model for assembly of large DNA viruses such as herpes and poxviruses.’
  • ‘Like all viruses, poxviruses co-opt various cellular molecules and processes to enter a cell, replicate and then spread to uninfected cells.’
  • ‘He followed this achievement by showing how poxviruses express their genes and replicate their DNA in host cells.’
  • ‘In the 1950s an introduced poxvirus decimated the European rabbit, the lynx's main prey.’