BACKGROUND Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection afflicts about 170 million individuals worldwide. However, the HCV life cycle is only partially understood because it has not been possible to infect normal human hepatocytes in culture. The current Huh-7 systems use cloned, synthetic HCV RNA expressed in hepatocellular carcinoma cells to produce virions, but these cells cannot be infected with natur...

In this article emphasis has been placed on the legitimacy of an increasing variety of culture as the epicenter of the spiritual life of a society. A renewed civil society should be aware of the standardization of spiritual life, of the unification of ideas and thoughts, and of people becoming anonymous. The more new ideas and thoughts that appear, the richer becomes society. Free competition o...

In this chapter, we present standard procedures for the culture of human cells that exhibit a finite proliferative capacity (replicative life-span). The use of a cell culture model has the advantage of providing a controlled environment to study a wide variety of cellular phenomena. It also has the inherent limitation of isolating cells from the regulatory elements that might be provided by oth...

In Caenorhabditis elegans, several manipulations that affect nutrition slow development, reduce fecundity, and increase life span. These are viewed as dietary restriction (DR) and include culture in semidefined, nutrient-rich liquid medium that is axenic (i.e., there is no microbial food source). Here we describe convenient ways to exert DR by culture on agar plates containing axenic medium. We...