---

 Hepatitis C virus (HCV) NS3/4A Serine protease is an important drug target for treating patients with hepatitis C virus. However, its amino acid mutations, particularly A156G, commonly lead to the rapid emergence of drug resistance. Bosiprevir, simiprevir, and viniprevir drugs approved by the FDA show distinct resistance profiles against the HCV NS3/4A protease. In order to show the behavior of each of these drugs in the interaction with the protease in the wild type and A156G mutant, molecular dynamics simulation and binding free energy calculations were performed. MMPBSA-based binding free energy calculations showed that the binding affinity of each of the drugs in the interaction with NS3/4A protease in the wild type is significantly more than the interaction with the protease in the A156G mutant state. Free energy landscape (FEL) calculations revealed that in the presence of each of the drugs, more basins of conformations are formed. We hope that our data can provide useful insights for the design of a new effective inhibitory drug for the treatment of patients with the hepatitis C virus.
 

---

The yellow-bud mutant hot pepper, 96-140YBM, which exhibits a yellow leaf phenotype in its young leaves but whose matured leaves are green, was isolated from wild type 96-140 in this study. The results of photosynthetic pigment determination and chloroplast ultrastructure observation revealed that the young mutant leaves displayed Chl a+b and Cars content, increased Chl a/b and Car/Chl a+b ratios, and delayed chloroplast development compared with the wild type leaves. Here, we obtained 95,714 transcripts from cultured yellow-bud mutant yellow leaves and cultured wild-type seedling leaves using the Illumina HiSeq-2000 (Illumina Inc., USA) platform. A total of 42,384 unigenes were identified, among which 37,949 were annotated using gene descriptions or gene ontology terms. Based on Differentially Expressed Genes (DEG) analysis, 1,056 of the 1,101 DEGs were annotated in the Nr database, and 302 unigenes were mapped to 130 pathways using the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway database. Finally, we found that 6 pathways were related to chloroplast and chlorophyll biogenesis.