Hepatitis C virus quasispecies variability modulates nonstructural protein 5A transcriptional activation, pointing to cellular compartmentalization of virus-host interactions.

ABSTRACT: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) behaves in infected patients as a complex mixture of genetically distinct but closely related variants referred to as a "quasispecies." By using quasispecies analysis strategies, we showed that HCV nonstructural protein 5A (NS5A) has a quasispecies distribution in infected humans and that NS5A quasispecies undergo significant genetic evolution over time, as a result of random accumulation of nucleotide mutations during replication. Genetic evolution of the NS5A quasispecies results in sporadic amino acid changes in the protein sequence. By using the functional in vitro model of HCV NS5A transcriptional activation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we showed that natural NS5A quasispecies variants induce different levels of transcriptional activation, according to the char

SUBMITTER: Pellerin M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC387712 | biostudies-literature | 2004 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature