MOLECULAR BIOLOGY OF HEPATITIS C VIRUS

丙型肝炎病毒(丙型肝炎病毒)是一种重要的人类病原体 与输血后肝炎以及散发性非甲非乙型肝炎有关 肝炎。最近，丙型肝炎病毒的cdna被克隆并进行了基因组测序。 其他。预测的多蛋白序列的一个区域被发现共享 与登革病毒编码的一种非结构蛋白的相似性 属于黄病毒家族。我们发现，使用计算机辅助分析， 丙型肝炎病毒与丙型肝炎病毒的蛋白质序列有更高的相似性 瘟疫病毒组的成员(即牛病毒性腹泻病毒和猪 霍乱病毒)，被认为与 黄病毒。此外，我们还发现，丙型肝炎病毒有显著的共同蛋白质 与由成员编码的多蛋白的序列相似性 类小核糖核酸病毒和类甲型病毒植物病毒超群。这些数据 提示丙型肝炎病毒在进化上可能与植物和动物有关 病毒。用聚合酶链式反应扩增技术研究丙型肝炎病毒的致病机制 病人感染和实验感染灵长类动物。意想不到的 发现是观察到丙型肝炎病毒的复制早在3岁时就开始了 黑猩猩实验性感染后的几天。

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is an important human pathogen that is strongly associated with post transfusion hepatitis as well as sporadic non-A, non-B hepatitis. Recently, HCV cDNA was cloned and its genome sequenced by others. A region of the predicted polyprotein sequence was found to share similarity with a non-structural protein encoded by dengue virus, a member of the flavivirus family. We found, using computer-assisted analysis, that HCV shares an even greater degree of protein sequence similarity with members of the pestivirus group (i.e., bovine viral diarrhea virus and hog cholera virus) which are thought to be distantly related to the flaviviruses. In addition, we found that HCV shares significant protein sequence similarity with the polyproteins encoded by members of the picornavirus-like and alphavirus-like plant virus supergroups. These data suggest that HCV may be evolutionarily related to both plant and animal viruses. PCR amplification was used to study the pathogenesis of HCV infection in patients and experimentally infected primates. An unexpected finding was the observation that HCV replication begins as early as three days following experimental infection of chimpanzees.