Historical Use
Cowpox was the original vaccine of sorts for smallpox. After infection with the disease, the body (usually) gains the ability of recognizing the similar smallpox virus from its antigens and so is able to fight the smallpox disease much more efficiently. The vaccinia virus now used for smallpox vaccination is sufficiently different from the cowpox virus found in the wild as to be considered a separate virus. The virus contains one hundred and eighty-six thousand base pairs of DNA, which contains the information for about one hundred and eighty-seven genes. This makes cowpox one of the most complicated viruses known. Some one hundred of these genes give instructions for key parts of the human immune system, giving a clue as to why the closely related smallpox is so lethal.
Read more about this topic: Cowpox
Famous quotes containing the word historical:
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
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