Haqshenas G, Dong X, Ewart G, Bowden S, Gowans E J
The Macfarlane Burnet Institute, GPO Box 2284, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia.
Virology. 2007 Mar 30;360(1):17-26. doi: 10.1016/j.virol.2006.10.014. Epub 2006 Nov 9.
The p7 protein of hepatitis C virus (HCV) functions as an ion channel in planar lipid bilayers, and its function is vital for the virus life cycle. In this study, we replaced either the entire or partial p7 of genotype 2a (strain JFH1), an HCV strain that replicates and produces virus progeny in vitro, with the corresponding regions of the p7 protein from genotype 1b (Australian isolate, HCV-A). Compared to wild type, the chimeric viruses reached their peak of infectivity with a delay but they produced a comparable titer to the wild type virus and the progeny viruses were able to infect naive permissive cells. Amantadine treatment of wild type and chimeric viruses reduced the virus titers by about 50% and 45%, respectively. Therefore, in this study, for the first time, we demonstrated that genotype 2a (JFH1 strain) genome encoding a full-length genotype 1b p7 gene produces infectious particles in vitro. These chimeric viruses are valuable instruments for comparative studies of the p7 proteins.
丙型肝炎病毒（HCV）的p7蛋白在平面脂质双分子层中作为离子通道发挥作用，其功能对病毒生命周期至关重要。在本研究中，我们将2a基因型（JFH1株）的全部或部分p7（2a基因型是一种能在体外复制并产生病毒子代的HCV毒株）替换为1b基因型p7蛋白的相应区域（澳大利亚分离株，HCV-A）。与野生型相比，嵌合病毒的感染性峰值出现延迟，但它们产生的病毒滴度与野生型病毒相当，且子代病毒能够感染未感染的易感细胞。用金刚烷胺处理野生型和嵌合病毒后，病毒滴度分别降低了约50%和45%。因此，在本研究中，我们首次证明编码全长1b基因型p7基因的2a基因型（JFH1株）基因组在体外产生有感染性的颗粒。这些嵌合病毒是用于p7蛋白比较研究的有价值工具。
