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Updated: Apr 19, 2026

Lipid Droplet Isolation for Quantitative Mass Spectrometry Analysis
Published on: April 17, 2017
Hepatitis C virus life cycle and lipid metabolism
Costin-Ioan Popescu1, Laura Riva2, Ovidiu Vlaicu3
1Institute of Biochemistry of the Romanian Academy, Splaiul Independentei 296, 060031 Bucharest 17, Romania. pop@biochim.ro.
Abstract:
Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infects over 150 million people worldwide. In most cases HCV infection becomes chronic, causing liver disease ranging from fibrosis to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. HCV affects the cholesterol homeostasis and at the molecular level, every step of the virus life cycle is intimately connected to lipid metabolism. In this review, we present an update on the lipids and apolipoproteins that are involved in the HCV infectious cycle steps: entry, replication and assembly. Moreover, the result of the assembly process is a lipoviroparticle, which represents a peculiarity of hepatitis C virion. This review illustrates an example of an intricate virus-host interaction governed by lipid metabolism.
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