WOODCHUCK VIRUS--MOLECULAR BIOLOGICAL STUDIES

土拨鼠肝炎病毒(WHV)在分类学和血清学上是 与乙肝病毒(乙肝病毒)有关。感染其中的每一种 病毒与急慢性肝炎和肝细胞有关 它们各自宿主中的癌症和这些关联似乎是 本质上是病因性的。因此，土拨鼠感染WHV提供了一种 一种相关的、方便的了解乙肝病毒感染的模型 人类。进行了以下实验：(1)变异性 对感染动物的WHV基因组进行了检测。(2)血清池 研究发现，携带和不携带缺陷病毒都会引起同样的症状 慢性携带者的百分比。这表明， WHV疫苗中有缺陷的病毒不是 持续的肝炎病毒感染的建立。(3)寡核苷酸 定向突变被用来将点突变引入到 前C和X基因以及开放阅读框5和6来确定 这些基因在土拨鼠病毒复制中的重要性 转染法检测。(4)克隆了WHV和HBVX基因启动子 将启动子插入载体pSVOCAT，比较人和 土拨鼠细胞。(5)准备克隆一株WHV纽约株 用于DNA测序。

The woodchuck hepatitis virus (WHV) is taxonomically and serologically related to the hepatitis B virus (HBV). Infection with each of these viruses is associated with acute and chronic hepatitis and hepatic cell carcinoma in their respective hosts and these associations appear to be etiological in nature. Thus, WHV infection of woodchucks provides a relevant and convenient model for understanding HBV infections of humans. The following experiments were performed: (1) The variability of WHV genomes in an infected animal was determined. (2) Serum pools with and without defective virus were found to induce the same percentage of chronic carriers. This suggests that the presence of defective virus in a WHV inoculum is not a prerequisite for the establishment of persistent hepadnavirus infections. (3) Oligonucleotide directed mutagenesis was used to introduce point mutations in the precore and X genes as well as open reading frames 5 and 6 to determine the importance of these genes in virus replication using woodchuck transfection assays. (4) The WHV and HBV X gene promoters were cloned into the vector pSVOCAT to compare promoter strength in human and woodchuck cells. (5) A New York strain of WHV was cloned in preparation for DNA sequencing.