Infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a worldwide health problem. Chronic hepatitis B can lead to fibrosis, liver cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Management of the latter two conditions often requires liver transplantation. Treatment with conventional interferon or pegylated interferon alpha can clear the virus, but the rates are very low. The likelihood, however, of viral resistance to interferon is minimal. The main problems with this therapy are the frequency and severity of side effects. In contrast, nucleos(t)ide analogs (NAs) have significantly lower side effects, but require long term treatment as sustained virological response rates are extremely low. However, long term treatment with NAs increases the risk for the development of anti-viral drug resistance. Only by understanding the molecular basis of resistance and using agents with multiple sites of action can drugs be designed to optimally prevent the occurrence of HBV antiviral resistance.
Protease is one of the most important groups of commercially produced enzymes. This study was aimed at the optimization and kinetics of protease production from poultry dropping based biodigested slurry by Humicola fuscoatra MTCC 1409. Four significant variables (pH, temperature, slurry concentration and inoculum concentration) were considered for optimization both by one variable at a time approach and response surface methodology. The maximum protease production in the poultry dropping based biodigested slurry was (531±1.37 U g -1 ) under the optimum conditions of pH (5), temperature (40°C), slurry concentration (25%) and inoculum concentration (10%). The protease production was found to be 3.38 fold higher under optimized conditions as compared to the non-optimized ones. The thermal inactivation of protease produced from biodigested slurry was investigated kinetically within temperature range of 30-70°C. The irreversible inactivation was well described by first order kinetics with k values increasing between 0.0028 to 0.0071 min -1 and t1/2 decreasing from247.70 to 98.10 mins.At higher temperature, there was significant decrease in residual activity. The activation energy, enthalpy, Gibbs free energy and entropy range calculated on the basis of residual activity experiments conducted at temperature range of 30-70°C was found to be 21.29, 18.44 to 18.78 kJ mol -1
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.