y the persistent infection of HCV. We identified SRCAP as a NS3 binding Chrysontemin supplier protein using yeast two-hybrid screening, and a co-immunoprecipitation assay demonstrated that NS3 can bind to SRCAP in mammalian cells. The results of a reporter gene assay using Hes-1 promoter which is known to be a target gene activated by Notch, indicate that NS3 and SRCAP cooperatively activate the Hes-1 promoter in Hep3B cells. In addition, we show in this report that also p400, which is known as a protein closely resembling SRCAP, would be targeted by NS3. NS3 exhibited binding activity also to the 1449808 region of p400 by a co-immunoprecipitation assay, and further the activation of the Notch-mediated transcription of Hes-1 promoter by NS3 decreased significantly by the combined silencing of SRCAP and p400 mRNA using short hairpin RNA. These results suggest that the HCV NS3 protein is involved in the activation of the Notch-signaling pathway through the targeting to both SRCAP and p400. Citation: Iwai A, Takegami T, Shiozaki T, Miyazaki T Hepatitis C Virus NS3 Protein Can Activate the Notch-Signaling Pathway through Binding to a Transcription Factor, SRCAP. PLoS ONE 6: e20718. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0020718 Editor: John E. Tavis, Saint Louis University, United States of America Received December 21, 2010; Accepted May 9, 2011; Published June 6, 2011 Copyright: 2011 Iwai et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The present work was supported by a Grant for Project Research from the High-Tech Research Center of Kanazawa Medical University. The funders 8664169 had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. E-mail: [email protected] Introduction The hepatitis C virus, a member of the Flaviviridae family, is known as a major risk factor for hepatocellular carcinomas. Infection with HCV frequently becomes a persistent infection and causes chronic hepatitis. During the course of long term HCV infections, chronic hepatitis frequently develops hepatic cancers through hepatic cirrhosis. The HCV has a single positivestranded RNA as the genome, and initially the viral proteins are synthesized as a single polypeptide, and then the polypeptide is cleaved by the viral and host cellular protease into the mature components of the virus. It has been reported that the viral components, Core, NS3 , NS4B, and NS5A independently indicate cell transforming activity, and these viral proteins are considered to be involved in the tumorigenesis caused by HCV infection. One of these proteins, NS3, has two enzymatic functions, serine protease and RNA helicase. Like other viral proteins, NS3 is known as a multifunctional protein which targets a variety of host factors and modulates its function. For instance, it has been reported that the HCV NS3 protein inhibits the protein kinase A and PKC functions, and like other HCV proteins, the Core and NS5A, p53 is also targeted by NS3. The Notch signaling pathway is evolutionarily conserved in many species, and is responsible for cell differentiation and proliferation. Four Notch family genes have been identified in humans, and these 
genes encode transmembrane receptors which recognize t
