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Mihaela Uta

Institute of Biochemistry of Romanian Academy, Romania

Title: Modulation of Hepatitis B Virus trafficking by autophagy pathways

Biography

Biography: Mihaela Uta

Abstract

Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection remains the primary risk fctor for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with more than 240 million people living in present with chronic infection. Autophagy is a degradative process that targets cytoplasmic macromolecules or deficient cellular organelles, and it has been recently shown that autophagy plays a key role in unconventional secretion of cytosolic proteins. Several studies indicate that HBV can hijack autophagy for its own benefits, to facilitate viral replication and pathogenesis. We assumed that the mechanism of secretory autophagy and the associated molecular machinery regulate HBV secretion from host cells. To investigate this hypothesis, we modulated gene expression of several proteins involved in autophagy in different HBV envelope glycoprotein expression systems. We observed that secretion of HBV envelope proteins decrease when the Atg16, Rab8a and Rab8b were down regulated. These results suggest the possible involvement of the autophagy proteins in the secretion mechanism of HBV. Further investigation will deal with the involvement of secretory autophagy in different aspects of HBV life cycle.