Complete replication of hepatitis C virus in cell culture.

Many aspects of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) life cycle have not been reproduced in cell culture, which has slowed research progress on this important human pathogen. Here, we describe a full-length HCV genome that replicates and produces virus particles that are infectious in cell culture (HCVcc). Replication of HCVcc was robust, producing nearly 10(5) infectious units per milliliter within 48 hours. Virus particles were filterable and neutralized with a monoclonal antibody against the viral glycoprotein E2. Viral entry was dependent on cellular expression of a putative HCV receptor, CD81. HCVcc replication was inhibited by interferon-alpha and by several HCV-specific antiviral compounds, suggesting that this in vitro system will aid in the search for improved antivirals

The directional observation of highly dynamic membrane tubule formation induced by engulfed liposomes

Highly dynamic tubular structures in cells are responsible for exchanges between organelles. Compared with bacterial invasion, the most affordable and least toxic lipids were found in this study to be gentle and safe exogenous stimuli for the triggering of membrane tubules. A specific lipid system was internalized by NIH3T3 cells. Following cellular uptake, the constructed liposomes traveled towards the nucleus in aggregations and were gradually distributed into moving vesicles and tubules in the cytosol. The triggered tubules proceeded, retreated or fluctuated along the cytoskeleton and were highly dynamic, moving quickly (up to several microns per second), and breaking and fusing frequently. These elongated tubules could also fuse with one another, giving rise to polygonal membrane networks. These lipid systems, with the novel property of accelerating intracellular transport, provide a new paradigm for investigating cellular dynamics

Chirped quasi-phase-matching with Gauss sums for production of biphotons

We study the theory of linearly chirped biphoton wave-packets produced in two basic quasi-phase-matching configurations: chirped photonic-like crystals and aperiodically poled crystals. The novelty is that these structures are considered as definite assembles of nonlinear layers that leads to detailed description of spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) processes through the discrete Gauss sums. We demonstrate that biphoton spectra for chirped photonic crystals involving a small number of layers consist from definite well-resolved spectral lines. We also discuss the forming of broadband spectra of signal (idler) waves in SPDC for both configurations as number of layers increases as well as in dependence of chirping parameters .Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure