Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Identification of a protein important for Hepatitis B replication

In a paper in this month’s PLoS Medicine, researchers from the Genome Institute of Singapore describe the identification of a human cellular protein that has a significant effect on the replication efficiency of Hepatitis B virus. Lisa F. P. Ng and colleagues found the protein--hnRNPK--when they noted an association between one particular sequence in the Hepatitis B virus and high levels of the virus in some infected patients. They discovered that how well the virus replicated is determined by a combination of sequence differences of the virus and how well hnRNPK binds to the viral DNA.

Hepatitis B is a serious global public health problem; more than 350 million people have lifelong infections. Chronically infected people are at high risk of death from cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer, which both kill about 1 million people each year. Current antiviral therapies include lamivudine and alpha-interferon which also suppress viral replication by attacking the virus itself, but the identification of the action of this protein offers new therapeutic opportunities by targeting the human proteins that help the virus to replicate.

Paul Ocampo | EurekAlert!
Further information:
http://www.plosmedicine.org
http://www.plos.org

Im Focus: Manipulating Electron Spins Without Loss of Information

Physicists have developed a new technique that uses electrical voltages to control the electron spin on a chip. The newly-developed method provides protection from spin decay, meaning that the contained information can be maintained and transmitted over comparatively large distances, as has been demonstrated by a team from the University of Basel’s Department of Physics and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute. The results have been published in Physical Review X.

For several years, researchers have been trying to use the spin of an electron to store and transmit information. The spin of each electron is always coupled...

Im Focus: The proton precisely weighted

What is the mass of a proton? Scientists from Germany and Japan successfully did an important step towards the most exact knowledge of this fundamental constant. By means of precision measurements on a single proton, they could improve the precision by a factor of three and also correct the existing value.

To determine the mass of a single proton still more accurate – a group of physicists led by Klaus Blaum and Sven Sturm of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear...

Im Focus: On the way to a biological alternative

A bacterial enzyme enables reactions that open up alternatives to key industrial chemical processes

The research team of Prof. Dr. Oliver Einsle at the University of Freiburg's Institute of Biochemistry has long been exploring the functioning of nitrogenase....

Im Focus: The 1 trillion tonne iceberg

Larsen C Ice Shelf rift finally breaks through

A one trillion tonne iceberg - one of the biggest ever recorded -- has calved away from the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica, after a rift in the ice,...

Im Focus: Laser-cooled ions contribute to better understanding of friction

Physics supports biology: Researchers from PTB have developed a model system to investigate friction phenomena with atomic precision

Friction: what you want from car brakes, otherwise rather a nuisance. In any case, it is useful to know as precisely as possible how friction phenomena arise –...