Hepatitis C virus e2 protein ectodomain is essential for assembly of infectious virions.
Hepatitis C virus e2 protein ectodomain is essential for assembly of infectious virions.
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DOI：
10.4061/2011/968161
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发表时间：
2011
影响因子：
1.8
通讯作者：
Merola M
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bianchi A;Crotta S;Brazzoli M;Foung SK;Merola M
The Hepatitis C virus E1 and E2 envelope proteins are the major players in all events required for virus entry into target cells. In addition, the recently developed HCV cell culture system has indicated that E1E2 heterodimer formation is a prerequisite for viral particle production. In this paper, we explored a new genetic approach to construct intergenotypic 2a/1b chimeras, maintaining the structural region of the infectious strain JFH1 and substituting the soluble portion of E1 and/or E2 proteins. This strategy provides useful information on the role of the surface-exposed domain of the envelope proteins in virus morphogenesis and allows comparative analysis of different HCV genotypes. We found that substituting the E2 protein ectodomain region abolishes the production of chimeric infectious particles. Our data indicate that the soluble part of the E2 protein is involved in a genotype-specific interplay with remaining viral proteins that affect the HCV assembly process.
