The C-terminal half of the preS1 region is essential for the secretion of human hepatitis B virus large S protein devoid of the N-terminal retention sequence.

A large surface protein of human hepatitis B virus was expressed from a mutated S gene in which both the reported retention sequence (aa 2-19) and the C-terminal half of the preS1 region (aa 66-117) were deleted. This retention sequence-free protein was not secreted from the monkey kidney cell line COS-M6 in transient expression assays. When this large S protein was overexpressed in the presence of the major S protein, the secretion of the latter was severely inhibited. Moreover, the presence of S protein in large abundance did not facilitate the secretion of the mutated large S protein at all, indicating that it was subject to more profound retention than the wild-type large S protein. The findings that, like the wild-type large S protein, this altered protein retained some of the properties of its C-terminal S domain, and that the preS1 region was still on its surface suggested that there was no extensive alteration of the polypeptide folding. The interpretation is favored that the C-terminal half of the preS1 region plays a crucial role in the secretion of the large S protein when its N-terminal retention sequence is not present.