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अमूर्त

One Year Passed Since A Bile Acid Transporter (Sodium Taurocholate Cotranspoting Peptide [NTCP] Was Nominated as A Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) Entry Receptor; Has the NTCP Has Been as A Real HBV Receptor?

Keiji Ueda

About one year ago, one important report in the virology field was published. It was a report by Yan et al. that an entry receptor for hepatitis B virus (HBV) was isolated and identified. It was also verified that this molecule termed sodium taurocholate cotransporting peptide (NTCP) was functionally active as an HBV receptor when it was introduced into hepatocyte originated hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines such as HepG2 and Huh7 cells. There has been, however, only one report published from the same group after this exciting report and the others are several short commentaries and no report to show the reproducibility. Recently, Meier et al. reported that the ligand region of the HBV membrane protein for NTCP, myristoylated preS1: 2-48 aa (myr2-48) could bind mouse hepatocyte but it was functionally inactive. Yan et al. reported that a functional determinant was the short amino acid sequence from 84 to 87 aa of NTCP. If so, what does this difference affect the function of NTCP as a HBV receptor. Thus, there are a lot of to do in order to understand how the HBV receptor works though we need to prove its reproducibility.