Does HBV infection induce acute cellular DNA damage?
http://www.eurekalert.org Eukaryotic cells employ multiple strategies of checkpoint signaling and DNA repair mechanisms to monitor and repair damaged DNA. There are two branches of the checkpoint response pathway, ataxia telangiectasia-mutated (ATM) pathway and ATM-Rad3-related (ATR) pathway. Virus replication presents the host cells with large amounts of exogenous genetic material, including DNA ends and unusual structures. Therefore, infected cells recognize viral replication as a DNA damage stress and elicit DNA damage signal transduction, which ultimately induces apoptosis as part of host immune surveillance. There was no evidence so far that the ATM/ATR kinases or their downstream pathways are triggered by HBV infection. A research article to be published on October 28, 2008 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. This research group was leaded by Dr Hui Zhong from Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, China. Using HL7702 hepatocytes with HBV-positive serum
