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In a surprising discovery, researchers from the Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), A*STAR, have found that the liver is the main site of hepatitis B (HBV) replication—not only because it contains material that helps the virus proliferate, but also because most other tissues of the body contain proteins that actively repress HBV replication.
“We’ve been working on this project for a number of years because HBV is very prevalent in Asia,” says Ee Chee Ren, leader of the SIgN team that made the discovery.
“HBV enters the liver cells through specific receptors and then deposits its genetic material into the nucleus,” explains SIgN’s Hui Ling Ko, the paper’s first author. The viral DNA then hijacks the host cell’s machinery to make new copies of HBV. While it’s known that liver cells contain factors that facilitate HBV replication, Ko and her team found that the cells also lack functional levels of the proteins Slug and SOX7. These proteins are found in most other human tissues, where they bind to the HBV genome and block the binding of the cells’ proteins that initiate and promote viral replication. “Slug and SOX7 are involved in embryonic development and that’s when they’re most active,” says Ko. After development, it is thought that the proteins are no longer required in the liver, and so get ‘turned off.’
Read more….https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-02-reveals-liver-weak-hepatitis-virus.html