Heterologous replacement of the supposed host determining region of avihepadnaviruses: high in vivo infectivity despite low infectivity for hepatocytes.

ABSTRACT: Hepadnaviruses, including hepatitis B virus (HBV), a highly relevant human pathogen, are small enveloped DNA viruses that replicate via reverse transcription. All hepadnaviruses display a narrow tissue and host tropism. For HBV, this restricts efficient experimental in vivo infection to chimpanzees. While the cellular factors mediating infection are largely unknown, the large viral envelope protein (L) plays a pivotal role for infectivity. Furthermore, certain segments of the PreS domain of L from duck HBV (DHBV) enhanced infectivity for cultured duck hepatocytes of pseudotyped heron HBV (HHBV), a virus unable to infect ducks in vivo. This implied a crucial role for the PreS sequence from amino acid 22 to 90 in the duck tropism of DHBV. Reasoning that reciprocal replacements would reduce i

SUBMITTER: Dallmeier K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2585059 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature