Illness and Diseases

The incidence and prevalence of HCV among dialysis patients varies markedly from country to country and among dialysis centers within a single country. HCV prevalence is much higher in developing countries as compared to developed world. First paper in Pakistan in this line of literature was published in 1999 and till yet six different reports […]

The striking genetic heterogeneity of the RNA genome of HCV is well recognized. On the basis of molecular relatedness, HCV is classified into 11 major genotypes: 1 through 11, among which first six are major player of infection globally. On the basis of phylogenetic analysis, over 80 subtypes and minor variants referred to as “quasispecies […]

High prevalence of Hepatitis C virus (HCV) has been reported among the dialysis patients throughout the world. No serious efforts were taken to investigate HCV in patients undergoing hemodialysis (HD) treatment who are at great increased risk to HCV. HCV genotypes are important in the study of epidemiology, pathogenesis and reaction to antiviral therapy. This […]

This study involved 384 patients treated with HD and was screened for anti HCV and tested for HCV RNA and HCV genotypes during January 2010-April 2010. The mean age of the patients was 40.9 ± 5.54 years (age rang15-75 years). 244 were male (mean age 40.4 ± 8.4) and 140 were female (age range 41.7 […]

5′-UTR sequence of DHV-1 ZJ strain (GenBank No. EF382778) was aligned with other DHV-1 isolates from GenBank using DNAstar (DNASTAR Inc.) software. Secondary structure elements were predicted in Mfold. Plasmid construction DNA preparations were performed using standard methods as described in manufacturers’ instructions. The reporter plasmids pGEM-CAT/EMC/LUC, containing the EMCV IRES cDNA, and pGEM-CAT/LUC were […]

Some picornaviruses, such as the AEV, contain HCV-like IRES elements organized in two major secondary structure domains, II and III, in which all the structural elements crucial for initiation of translation are located. Mutations within the putative loop of domain IIIe and stem1, 2 inhibited the DHV-1 IRES function. Moreover, the restoration of these structures […]

In order to evaluate the contribution of the remaining component of the eIF4F complex, the RNA helicase eIF4A, two different experimental in vitro approaches were used. Firstly, the effect on DHV-1 translation initiation of two different dominant negative mutants of eIF4A was evaluated. The dominant negative mutant PRRVAA contains a mutation in the conserved Ia […]

DHV-1 IRES activity is modulated by downstream coding sequences To further characterize the presence of accessory regulatory sequences downstream of the 5′-UTR of the viral genome, 4 additional dicistronic reporter plasmids were constructed, containing DHV-1 5′-UTR and 10, 40 or 60 nucleotides of the coding region adjacent to the viral 5′-UTR (DHV-1 UTR+10nt, UTR+40nt, UTR+60nt, […]

The in vitro translation of the reporter proteins was evaluated measuring 35S-methionine incorporation. Cap-dependent translation from the first ORF was determined by the level of CAT expression and internal initiation activity of the different sequences included between the two reporter genes was estimated by the accumulation of fLUC. All the mRNAs expressed CAT efficiently as […]

According to their secondary structure, picornavirus IRES elements can be divided into four groups that display distinct biological properties. The first group (class I) includes the IRES elements from entero- and rhinoviruses (e.g. poliovirus, PV), while the second includes cardio- and aphthoviruses IRES elements (e.g. encephalomyocarditis virus, EMCV). The IRES element from hepatitis A virus […]