All coronaviruses possess small open reading frames (ORFs) between structural genes that have been hypothesized to play important roles in pathogenesis. Infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) ORF 3a is one such gene. It is highly conserved among group 3 coronaviruses, suggesting that it has an important function in infection. IBV 3a protein is expressed in infected cells but is not detected in virio...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI) is often caused by antibodies against human neutrophil alloantigen-2 (HNA-2) and HNA-3a. Neutrophil aggregation is considered as a major cause of TRALI, but little is known about how HNA antibodies initiate this process. We explored mechanisms involved in neutrophil aggregation induced by HNA-2 and HNA-3a antibodies. MATE...

The anterior commissure forms the first axon connections between the two sides of the embryonic telencephalon. We investigated the role of the transmembrane receptor Frizzled-3a in the development of this commissure using zebrafish as an experimental model. Knock down of Frizzled-3a resulted in complete loss of the anterior commissure. This defect was accompanied by a loss of the glial bridge, ...

BACKGROUND Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is the leading cause of chronic hepatitis which progresses to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) afflicting > 170 million people worldwide. HCV 3a is the most common genotype (about 70% of all genotypes) circulating in Pakistan. Expression of HCV individual gene of 3a would facilitate therapeutic and vaccines strategies against chronic HCV and liver Cirr...

The orf3a (also called X1 or U274) gene is the largest unique open reading frame in the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus genome and has been proposed to encode a protein with three transmembrane domains and a large cytoplasmic domain. Recent work has suggested that the 3a protein may play a structural role in the viral life cycle, although the mechanisms for this remain uncharacter...

Retinoblastoma is a rare childhood cancer of the retina that begins in utero and is diagnosed in the first years of life. The goals of retinoblastoma treatment are ocular salvage, vision preservation, and reduction of short- and long-term side effects without risking mortality because of tumor dissemination. To identify better chemotherapeutic combinations for the treatment of retinoblastoma, s...

Transient induction of p53 can cause reversible quiescence and irreversible senescence. Using nutlin-3a (a small molecule that activates p53 without causing DNA damage), we have previously identified cell lines in which nutlin-3a caused quiescence. Importantly, nutlin-3a caused quiescence by actively suppressing the senescence program (while still causing cell cycle arrest). Noteworthy, in thes...