https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(04)01593-8/pdf

Hepatocellular carcinoma in cirrhosis: incidence and risk factors.

Initiation of translation of most eukaryotic mRNAs commences with 5 end–dependent recruitment of 40S ribosomal subunits to the mRNA. The 40S subunit carrying the initiator methionine-tRNA and certain eukaryotic initiation factors (eIFs) is thought to scan the mRNA in a 5 to 3 direction until an appropriate start codon is encountered at which stage a 60S subunit joins to form an 80S ribosome that can decode the RNA into protein (Kozak 1989; Hershey and Merrick 2000). A subset of mRNAs contains internal ribosomal entry sites (IRESs), usually in the 5 NTR, that enable end-independent initiation to occur. IRES-containing mRNAs are not subjected to many of the regulatory mechanisms that control recruitment of most mRNAs to the translation apparatus. In this review, we briefly provide an introduction to the known mechanisms of translation initiation. Then, we discuss in detail the molecular mechanisms of IRES-mediated initiation and how they are used by specific mRNAs to permit translation under physiological circumstances such as mitosis, apoptosis, hypoxia, and some viral infections when translation of most mRNAs is repressed.

/pdf/internal-ribosome-entry-sites-in-eukaryotic-mrna-molecules-47picfqz3u.pdf

Internal ribosome entry sites in eukaryotic mRNA molecules

Among the many viruses that are known to infect the human liver, hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) are unique because of their prodigious capacity to cause persistent infection, cirrhosis, and liver cancer. HBV and HCV are noncytopathic viruses and, thus, immunologically mediated events play an important role in the pathogenesis and outcome of these infections. The adaptive immune response mediates virtually all of the liver disease associated with viral hepatitis. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that antigen-nonspecific inflammatory cells exacerbate cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL)-induced immunopathology and that platelets enhance the accumulation of CTLs in the liver. Chronic hepatitis is characterized by an inefficient T cell response unable to completely clear HBV or HCV from the liver, which consequently sustains continuous cycles of low-level cell destruction. Over long periods of time, recurrent immune-mediated liver damage contributes to the development of cirrhos...

Immunobiology and pathogenesis of viral hepatitis.

Collectively, the results summarized in this review suggest that HBV acts like a stealth virus early in infection, remaining undetected and spreading until the onset of the adaptive immune response several weeks later. We suspect that the relative invisibility of HBV to the innate sensing machinery of the cells reflects its replication strategy, which sequesters the transcriptional template in the nucleus, entails the production of capped and polyadenylated viral mRNAs that resemble the structure of normal cellular transcripts, and the replicating viral genome is sheltered within viral capsid particles in the cytoplasm and, therefore, does not elicit a response. In contrast, HCV activates a strong intracellular antiviral response in the liver, presumably because it replicates via a dsRNA intermediate in the cytoplasm, where it can readily induce the cellular dsRNA sensing apparatus and initiate the signaling cascade. In turn, this results in the induction of many genes, such as the 2′,5′-oligoadenylate synthetase Mx1, that have known antiviral activity (reviewed in references 128 and 141); TRIM14 and 22, members of the same gene family as TRIM5, which has been shown to be part of the host defense against retroviruses (reviewed in reference 11); and ISG15, which has recently been proposed to have a role in innate immunity (124). Impressively, however, HCV cunningly manages to spread through the liver despite induction of these genes, presumably because its E2, NS3, and NS5A proteins can defeat them. On the other hand, both viruses can be controlled when CD8+ T cells enter the liver, recognize antigen, kill whatever infected cells they encounter, and secrete IFN-γ, which triggers a broad-based cascade that amplifies the inflammatory process and has antiviral activity, at least in HBV-transgenic mice and the HBV and HCV cell culture systems. The unexpected finding that HBV does not modulate host cellular gene transcription and apparently does not induce an innate immune response when spreading through the liver raises the possibility that HBV, unlike HCV and other viruses, has evolved to evade innate immunity by not inducing it rather then actively counteracting it; this, in turn, might leave HBV very sensitive to intracellular antiviral mechanisms when they are induced by the adaptive immune system or an unrelated viral infection. Although we suggest that HBV and HCV infections can be inhibited noncytopathically by the cellular genes that are induced during this process, the identities of those genes, the antiviral mechanisms they elicit, and the unique evasion strategies of each virus remain to be determined, marking a new starting point in the quest to understand the cellular and molecular immunobiology of these viral infections.

https://jvi.asm.org/content/jvi/79/15/9369.full.pdf

Stealth and cunning: hepatitis B and hepatitis C viruses.

http://www.dbm.ufpb.br/~marques/Artigos/Mitochondrial%20intermembrane%20proteins%20in%20cell%20death.pdf

Mitochondrial intermembrane proteins in cell death.

https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(02)73468-9/pdf

Steatosis and liver cancer in transgenic mice expressing the structural and nonstructural proteins of hepatitis C virus.

The regulation of cap-independent translation directed by the internal ribosome entry sites (IRESs) present in some viral and cellular RNAs is poorly understood. Polypyrimidine-tract binding protein (PTB) binds specifically to several viral IRESs. IRES-directed translation may be reduced in cell-free systems that are depleted of PTB and restored by reconstitution of lysates with recombinant PTB. However, there are no data concerning the effects of PTB on IRES-directed translation in vivo. We transfected cells with plasmids expressing dicistronic transcripts in which the upstream cistron encoded PTB or PTB deletion mutants (including a null mutant lacking amino acid residues 87 to 531). The downstream cistron encoded a reporter protein (chloramphenicol acetyltransferase [CAT]) under translational control of the poliovirus IRES which was placed within the intercistronic space. In transfected BS-C-1 cells, transcripts expressing wild-type PTB produced 12-fold more reporter protein than similar transcripts encoding the PTB null mutant. There was a 2.4-fold difference in CAT produced from these transcripts in HeLa cells, which contain a greater natural abundance of PTB. PTB similarly stimulated CAT production from transcripts containing the IRES of hepatitis A virus or hepatitis C virus in BS-C-1 cells and Huh-7 cells (37- to 44-fold increase and 5 to 5.3-fold increase, respectively). Since PTB had no quantitative or qualitative effect on transcription from these plasmids, we conclude that PTB stimulates translation of representative picornaviral and flaviviral RNAs in vivo. This is likely to reflect the stabilization of higher ordered RNA structures within the IRES and was not observed with PTB mutants lacking RNA recognition motifs located in the C-terminal third of the molecule.

Transient expression of cellular polypyrimidine-tract binding protein stimulates cap-independent translation directed by both picornaviral and flaviviral internal ribosome entry sites In vivo.

Rainer Gosert

Papers

Steatosis and liver cancer in transgenic mice expressing the structural and nonstructural proteins of hepatitis C virus.

Transient expression of cellular polypyrimidine-tract binding protein stimulates cap-independent translation directed by both picornaviral and flaviviral internal ribosome entry sites In vivo.