Necrotic enteritis toxin B (NetB) is a β-pore-forming toxin produced by Clostridium perfringens and has been identified as a key virulence factor in the pathogenesis of avian necrotic enteritis, a disease causing significant economic damage to the poultry industry worldwide. In this study, site-directed mutagenesis was used to identify amino acids that play a role in NetB oligomerisation and po...

Hepatitis E virus (HEV), the causative agent of hepatitis E, is an important human pathogen. Increasing evidence indicates that hepatitis E is a zoonosis. Avian HEV was recently discovered in chickens with hepatitis-splenomegaly syndrome in the USA. Like swine HEV from pigs, avian HEV is also genetically and antigenically related to human HEV. The objective of this study was to construct and ch...

Campylobacter jejuni isolates possess multiple adhesive proteins termed adhesins, which promote the organism's attachment to epithelial cells. Based on the proposal that one or more adhesins are shared among C. jejuni isolates, we hypothesized that C. jejuni strains would compete for intestinal and cecal colonization in broiler chicks. To test this hypothesis, we selected two C. jejuni strains ...

Objective: to find out the frequency of various congenital malformations (CM) in the neonates born at Liaqat Memorial Hospital (LMH) Kohat and to find out their association with various risk factors. Methodology: This cross-sectional study was conducted on neonates born to mothers admitted at LMH, Kohat from January to December 2011. Detailed information regarding CM and associated maternal ris...

Human hepatitis delta virus (HDV) is a natural subviral agent that uses hepatitis B virus as a helper. Experimentally, HDV can be made to replicate in woodchucks, using woodchuck hepatitis B virus as a helper virus. Also, independent of such helper activity, replication of the HDV RNA genome can be achieved in many mammalian cells. In this study we examined whether such replication could also b...

Previous studies have shown that in vitro expression of the neural cell adhesion molecule (N-CAM) can be regulated by the products of homeobox genes HoxB9, -B8, and -C6. N-CAM is a Ca(2+)-independent immunoglobulin-related CAM that plays an important role in neural development. In the present study, we investigated whether the liver cell adhesion molecule (L-CAM) a member of the Ca(2+)-dependen...

The ORF3 protein of hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a multifunctional protein important for virus replication. The ORF3 proteins from human, swine, and avian strains of HEV contain a conserved PXXP amino acid motif, resembling either Src homology 3 (SH3) cell signaling interaction motifs or "late domains" involved in host cell interactions aiding in particle release. Using an avian strain of HEV, we...

Persistent hepadnavirus infection leads to oxidative stress and DNA damage through increased production of toxic oxygen radicals. In addition, hepadnaviral DNA integrations into chromosomal DNA can promote the process of hepatocarcinogenesis (M. Feitelson, Clin. Microbiol. Rev. 5:275-301, 1992). While previous studies have identified preferred integration sites in hepadnaviral genomes and sugge...