For intracellular survival it is imperative that viruses have the capacity to manipulate various cellular responses, including metabolic and biosynthetic pathways. The unfolded protein response (UPR) is induced by various external and internal stimuli, including the accumulation of misfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Our previous studies have indicated that the replication and...

The nonstructural protein 3 (NS3) from the hepatitis C virus processes the non-structural region of the viral precursor polyprotein in infected hepatic cells. The NS3 protease activity has been considered a target for drug development since its identification two decades ago. Although specific inhibitors have been approved for clinical therapy very recently, resistance-associated mutations have...

Protease inhibitors (PIs) of hepatitis C virus (HCV) provide an additional or alternative therapy for chronic infection. However, assessment of their efficacy and ability to inhibit replication of different genotypes is hampered by the lack of a convenient animal model or a method for in vitro culture of HCV other than the type 1/2-based replicons and the infectious genotype 2a clone JFH1. To a...

West Nile virus (WNV) is a neurotropic mosquito-borne flavivirus responsible for outbreaks of meningitis and encephalitis. Whereas the activation of autophagy in cells infected with other flaviviruses is well known, the interaction of WNV with the autophagic pathway still remains unclear and there are reports describing opposite findings obtained even analyzing the same viral strain. To clarify...

Dengue virus serotype 2 (DENV-2) isolates have been implicated in deadly outbreaks of dengue fever (DF) and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) in several regions of the world. Phylogenetic analysis of DENV-2 isolates collected from particular countries has been performed using partial or individual genes but only a few studies have examined complete whole-genome sequences collected worldwide. Herei...