Hepatitis B virus X protein activates transcription factor NF-kappa B without a requirement for protein kinase C

Mitochondrially associated hepatitis B virus X protein constitutively activates transcription factors STAT-3 and NF-kappa B via oxidative stress.

The hepatitis B virus X protein (HBx) plays essential roles in viral replication and the generation of hepatocellular carcinoma. In spite of a large number of suggestive cellular targets and functions, a clear picture of its mechanism(s) of action has remained elusive. In this report, we continue to characterize its recently described mitochondrial association and further examine its impact on ...

Hepatitis B virus pX activates NF-kappa B-dependent transcription through a Raf-independent pathway.

In this study, we characterized the molecular events involved in the activation of the ubiquitous transcription factor NF-kappa B by the viral transactivator pX. pX expression in HeLa cells determines a manyfold increase in NF-kappa B-dependent transcription, which is associated with an increase in p50/p65 heterodimer DNA-binding activity. Since the I kappa B-alpha inhibitory subunit proteolyti...

Mitochondrially Associated Hepatitis B Virus X Protein Constitutively Activates Transcription Factors STAT-3 and NF- B via Oxidative Stress

Hepatitis B virus X protein activates a survival signaling by linking SRC to phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase.

We have previously shown that transactivation-proficient hepatitis virus B X protein (HBx) protects Hep 3B cells from transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta)-induced apoptosis via activation of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI 3-kinase)/Akt signaling pathway. This work further investigated how HBx activates PI 3-kinase. Src activity was elevated in Hep 3B cells following expression of t...

In Silico Prediction and Docking of Tertiary Structure of Multifunctional Protein X of Hepatitis B Virus

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a universal health problem and may result into acute, fulminant, chronic hepatitis liver cirrhosis, or hepatocellular carcinoma. Sequence for protein X of HBV was retrieved from Uniprot database. ProtParam from ExPAsy server was used to investigate the physicochemical properties of the protein. Homology modeling was carried out using Phyre2 server, and refin...