Increasing hepatic stellate cell (HSC) death is an attractive approach for limiting liver fibrosis. We investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying the effects of sorafenib on HSCs. LX2 cells were incubated with sorafenib and a variety of inhibitors of apoptosis, autophagy, and necrosis. Electron microscopy was used to observe autophagosomes. Inhibitors and siRNA were used to examine the role of the Akt/mTOR/p70S6K and JNK pathways. Ultrastructural analysis revealed that rat HSCs treated with 5 μmol/l sorafenib accumulated residual digested material and empty or autophagic vacuoles. Incubating LX2 cells with lysosomal protease inhibitors increased the accumulation of LC3-II, indicating that sorafenib enhances autophagic flux in HSCs. Autophagy may precede apoptosis. Lower concentrations of sorafenib and a shorter treatment time resulted in the dominance of autophagic cell death over apoptosis. Further analysis showed that Beclin 1 is inactivated by the caspases induced by sorafenib during apoptosis. Inhibition of autophagy in LX2 cells using 3-methyladenine treatment or siRNA-mediated knockdown of Atg5 resulted in a marked increase in apoptosis. Finally, sorafenib induced programmed cell death by attenuation and activation of Akt/mTOR/p70S6K and JNK signaling. Sorafenib-induced cell death is mediated by both autophagy and apoptosis. Elucidation of the signaling pathways activated by sorafenib could potentially lead to novel antifibrosis therapies for chronic liver diseases.

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Background Viruses play critical roles in the marine environment because of their interactions with an extremely broad range of potential hosts. Many studies of viruses in seawater have been published, but viruses that inhabit marine animals have been largely neglected. Oysters are keystone species in coastal ecosystems, yet as filter-feeding bivalves with very large roosting numbers and species co-habitation, it is not clear what role they play in marine virus transmission and coastal microbiome regulation. Results Here, we report a Dataset of Oyster Virome (DOV) that contains 728,784 nonredundant viral operational taxonomic unit contigs (≥ 800 bp) and 3473 high-quality viral genomes, enabling the first comprehensive overview of both DNA and RNA viral communities in the oyster Crassostrea hongkongensis. We discovered tremendous diversity among novel viruses that inhabit this oyster using multiple approaches, including reads recruitment, viral operational taxonomic units, and high-quality virus genomes. Our results show that these viruses are very different from viruses in the oceans or other habitats. In particular, the high diversity of novel circoviruses that we found in the oysters indicates that oysters may be potential hotspots for circoviruses. Notably, the viruses that were enriched in oysters are not random but are well-organized communities that can respond to changes in the health state of the host and the external environment at both compositional and functional levels. Conclusions In this study, we generated a first “knowledge landscape” of the oyster virome, which has increased the number of known oyster-related viruses by tens of thousands. Our results suggest that oysters provide a unique habitat that is different from that of seawater, and highlight the importance of filter-feeding bivalves for marine virus exploration as well as their essential but still invisible roles in regulating marine ecosystems.

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