A truncated structural protein of hepatitis E virus (HEV), p239, occurs as 23 nm particles consisting of partial homodimers. As the latter resemble the HEV capsomere structurally and antigenically, it was postulated that the recombinant protein may serve as a probe for the HEV receptor. This hypothesis was supported by findings that purified p239 bound and penetrated different cell lines that are susceptible to HEV, and inhibited HEV infection of these cells. The binding was blocked by four of six monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) reactive against the dimeric domain of p239, and by two of three mAbs reactive against its monomeric domain, suggesting that binding may involve a portion of each domain. Mutation affecting the monomeric domain had no effect on binding or capacity to block HEV infection, whereas that affecting the dimeric domain diminished binding of the mutant peptide markedly and abrogated its capacity to block HEV infection. These results suggest that HEV infection might involve distinct receptor-binding sites.

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Currently, HIV-1 non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) are a major component of the highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) regimen. However, the occurrence of drug-resistant strains and adverse reactions after long-term usage have inevitably compromised the clinical application of NNRTIs. Therefore, the development of novel inhibitors with distinct anti-resistance profiles and better pharmacological properties is still an enormous challenge. Herein, we summarize state-of-the-art medicinal chemistry strategies for the discovery of potent NNRTIs, such as structure-based design strategies, contemporary computer-aided drug design, covalent-binding strategies, and the application of multi-target-directed ligands. The strategies described here will facilitate the identification of promising HIV-1 NNRTIs.

Background Anomala corpulenta is an important insect pest and can cause enormous economic losses in agriculture, horticulture and forestry. It is widely distributed in China, and both larvae and adults can cause serious damage. It is difficult to control this pest because the larvae live underground. Any new control strategy should exploit alternatives to heavily and frequently used chemical insecticides. However, little genetic research has been carried out on A. corpulenta due to the lack of genomic resources. Genomic resources could be produced by next generation sequencing technologies with low cost and in a short time. In this study, we performed de novo sequencing, assembly and characterization of the antennal transcriptome of A. corpulenta.ResultsIllumina sequencing technology was used to sequence the antennal transcriptome of A. corpulenta. Approximately 76.7 million total raw reads and about 68.9 million total clean reads were obtained, and then 35,656 unigenes were assembled. Of these unigenes, 21,463 of them could be annotated in the NCBI nr database, and, among the annotated unigenes, 11,154 and 6,625 unigenes could be assigned to GO and COG, respectively. Additionally, 16,350 unigenes could be annotated in the Swiss-Prot database, and 14,499 unigenes could map onto 258 pathways in the KEGG Pathway database. We also found 24 unigenes related to OBPs, 6 to CSPs, and in total 167 unigenes related to chemodetection. We analyzed 4 OBPs and 3CSPs sequences and their RT-qPCR results agreed well with their FPKM values.ConclusionWe produced the first large-scale antennal transcriptome of A. corpulenta, which is a species that has little genomic information in public databases. The identified chemodetection unigenes can promote the molecular mechanistic study of behavior in A. corpulenta. These findings provide a general sequence resource for molecular genetics research on A. corpulenta.

Aphids cause serious losses to the production of wheat. The grain aphid, Sitobion avenae, which is the dominant species of aphid in all wheat regions of China, is resistant to a variety of insecticides, including imidacloprid and chlorpyrifos. However, the resistance and mechanism of insecticide tolerance of S. avenae are still unclear. Therefore, this study employed transcriptome analysis to compare the expression patterns of stress response genes under imidacloprid and chlorpyrifos treatment for 15 min, 3 h, and 36 h of exposure. S. avenae adult transcriptome was assembled and characterized first, after which samples treated with insecticides for different lengths of time were compared with control samples, which revealed 60–2267 differentially expressed unigenes (DEUs). Among these DEUs, 31–790 unigenes were classified into 66–786 categories of gene ontology (GO) functional groups, and 24–760 DEUs could be mapped into 54–268 Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways. Finally, 11 insecticide-tolerance-related unigenes were chosen to confirm the relative expression by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) in each treatment. Most of the results between qRT-PCR and RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) are well-established. The results presented herein will facilitate molecular research investigating insecticide resistance in S. avenae, as well as in other wheat aphids.