Hepatitis E virus (HEV) is a common causative agent of acute hepatitis. Due to the shortage of efficient in vitro model, the viral assembly and release processes are still poorly understood. In this study, we found that ORF3, an HEV structural protein showed prion-like properties. The prion domain (PrD) of yeast prion Sup35 could be functionally replaced by HEV-ORF3 and its candidate PrD (cPrD). A single amino acid substitution in the cPrD reduced the aggregation propensity of ORF3 and blocked the function of ORF3 in enhancing the stability of microtubules in HEV-infected cells, thus blocking virion release from the infected cells and resulting in reduced HEV pathogenicity in Mongolian gerbils. These data suggest that HEV-ORF3 is a novel functional prion-like protein which assembles into a filamentous structure for virion release, supporting the hypothesis that the self-propagating properties of prion proteins are widely exploited as epigenetic information carriers in nature.
A fluorine-free strategy was developed for the hydrophobic modification of the melamine (MA) sponge, in which both the stearic acid-modified Fe3O4 nanoparticles (SA-Fe3O4) and the graphite oxide were immobilized on the MA sponge with the using of the 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane by a drop-coating method to prepare the SA-Fe3O4/GO/MA sponge for the oil-water separation. The structure of the SA-Fe3O4/GO/MA sponge was investigated by FITR, WAXD, SEM, two dimensional EDS mapping, TGA, and VSM. The contact angles of the SA-Fe3O4/GO/MA sponge obtained from different using amounts of the SA-Fe3O4 and the GO were in the range of 140.2o-145.0o, which confirmed the successfully hydrophobic surface modification for the MA sponge. The demonstration experiments exhibited that the SA-Fe3O4/GO/MA sponge could separate the oil from the oil-water mixture by the direct absorption and the gravity-driven filtration. Additionally, the SA-Fe3O4/GO/MA sponge possessed not only high absorption capacities for the peanut oil, the n-hexane, the soybean oil, and the diesel oil but also good magnetically recollected and reused ability. We hope that such a new SA-Fe3O4/GO/MA sponge might be really utilized for the oil-water separation in the future.
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