High-resolution functional profiling of hepatitis C virus genome.

ABSTRACT: Hepatitis C virus is a leading cause of human liver disease worldwide. Recent discovery of the JFH-1 isolate, capable of infecting cell culture, opens new avenues for studying HCV replication. We describe the development of a high-throughput, quantitative, genome-scale, mutational analysis system to study the HCV cis-elements and protein domains that are essential for virus replication. An HCV library with 15-nucleotide random insertions was passaged in cell culture to examine the effect of insertions at each genome location by insertion-specific fluorescent-PCR profiling. Of 2399 insertions identified in 9517 nucleotides of the genome, 374, 111, and 1914 were tolerated, attenuating, and lethal, respectively, for virus replication. Besides identifying novel functional domains, this approac

SUBMITTER: Arumugaswami V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2564836 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature