Hepatitis C virus subgenomic replicons in the human embryonic kidney 293 cell line.

ABSTRACT: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects liver cells and its replication in other cells is incompletely defined. Human hepatoma Huh-7 cells harboring subgenomic HCV replicons were used in somatic cell fusion experiments with human embryonic kidney 293 cells as a means of examining the permissiveness of 293 cells for HCV subgenomic RNA replication. 293 cells were generally not permissive for replication of Huh-7 cell-adapted replicons. However, upon coculturing of the two cell lines, we selected rare replicon-containing cells, termed 293Rep cells, that resembled parental 293 cells. Direct metabolic labeling of cells with (33)P in the presence of actinomycin D and Northern blotting to detect the negative strand of the replicon demonstrated functional RNA replicons in 293Rep cells. Furthermore, Wester

SUBMITTER: Ali S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC303421 | biostudies-literature | 2004 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature