MOLECULAR AND COMPUTER ANALYSIS OF THE HEPATITIS B VIRUS GENOME

这个项目的目的是用计算机和计算机分析乙肝病毒基因组 分子技术。我们的计算机分析揭示了几个重要的 研究结果：(1)对乙肝病毒的组织结构进行了详细的研究 基因组，并发现它非常紧凑，因为病毒编码 来自重叠翻译框架的蛋白质，因为所有顺式作用 控制元件位于蛋白质编码序列中。(2)我们发现 禽流感病毒在中心结构域内具有序列 与哺乳动物庚型肝炎病毒X基因相似的核心基因 序列。(3)乙肝病毒和逆转录病毒具有共同的基因组结构特征 和复制。这一点意义重大，因为它表明这些不同的 病毒家族是从一种常见的祖先病毒进化而来的。

The purpose of this project is to analyze the HBV genome using computer and molecular techniques. Our computer analysis reveals several important findings: (1) We made a detailed study of the organization of the HBV genome and find that it is extremely compact because the virus encodes proteins from overlapping translation frames and because all cis-acting control elements are located within protein encoding sequences. (2) We find that the avian hepadnaviruses possess sequences within the central domain of the core gene that are similar to mammalian hepadnavirus X gene sequences. (3) HBV and retroviruses share features of genome organization and replication. This is significant because it suggests that these diverse virus families evolved from a common ancestral virus.