NRAS codon 61 mutation is associated with distant metastasis in patients with follicular thyroid carcinoma.

Background: Known factors related to distant metastases in follicular thyroid carcinoma (FTC) included age, primary tumor size, and invasiveness. Distant metastasis is a main cause of death in FTC patients. Several studies showed that the presence of RAS mutations is also associated with poor clinical outcomes.

The HIV-1 nucleocapsid protein does not function as a transcriptional activator on its own cognate promoter.

The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) nucleocapsid (NC) is a multifunctional, zinc finger-containing protein known to be involved in almost every step of the viral life cycle. We therefore examined the effects of NC in vivo as a transcription activator on the basal transcriptional activity of the HIV-1 U3 and Rous sarcoma virus (RSV) promoters, as well as HIV-1 long terminal repeats (LTRs) such as the U3R and U3RU5 regions, using promoter-fused reporter gene assays, Western blot analyses, and quantitative real time-polymerase chain reaction. From these studies, we found that the basal transcriptional levels of the HIV-1 U3 and RSV promoters were barely enhanced by the presence of NC.