Investigation of hepatitis B virus replication in host cell metabolism.

• Main Author: Low, William Tiong Keng.
• Other Authors: Chen Wei Ning, William
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Chemical engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/50522
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Hepatitis B is a global concern. About 2 billion people have been infected by it and 350 million people are chronic carriers. Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) is causative of hepatocellular carcinoma and patients who suffer from chronic HBV infection have a 100-fold chance of developing HCC. A few HBV genes were frequently reported in HCC tumors. One of them is HBx which codes for the promiscuous protein X (HBx). Although HBx has been found to be implicated in the alteration of various cellular pathways, its role as a carcinogen has not been established. Alteration to metabolism is a hallmark of cancer. To investigate the relationship between HBV replication and the host cell’s metabolism, HepG2 cells were transfected with HBx plasmids and the proteins and metabolites were extracted and analyzed using LC-MS/MS and GC-MS. The results showed that glycolytic enzymes and the product of glycolysis were over expressed in cells transfected with HBx indicating that glycolysis has been accelerated. This hints that replicating HBV could alter metabolism by enhancing glycolysis which is characteristic of cancer cells.