Kanduc Darja
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; University of Bari; Bari, Italy.
Self Nonself. 2011 Apr;2(2):108-113. doi: 10.4161/self.2.2.15795. Epub 2011 Apr 1.
An inspection of the sequence similarity between the hepatitis C virus (HCV) polyprotein and human proteins revealed a high level of peptide sharing, with a limited number of motifs unique to the virus (i.e., with no counterpart in the human proteome). Using pentapeptide matching, only 214 motifs out of a total of 3,007 (7.11%) identified HCV as nonself compared to the Homo sapiens proteome. However, this virus-versus-human phenetic difference disappeared at the genetic level. Indeed, a BLAST analysis of pentadecameric oligodeoxynucleotide sequences corresponding to the 214 pentapeptides unique to HCV revealed that almost all of them are present in the human genome, located in the non-coding strand, introns, and/or pseudogenes, thus being, as such, untranslatable. The present data warn against using DNA-based vaccines to fight HCV infection and emphasize peptide uniqueness as the molecular basis for designing effective anti-HCV immunotherapeutic approaches.
对丙型肝炎病毒（HCV）多聚蛋白与人类蛋白质之间的序列相似性进行检查后发现，二者存在高度的肽段共享现象，只有有限数量的基序是该病毒所特有的（即在人类蛋白质组中没有对应物）。使用五肽匹配法，在总共3007个基序中，只有214个（7.11%）将HCV鉴定为与智人蛋白质组不同源的物质。然而，这种病毒与人类在表型上的差异在基因水平上消失了。实际上，对与HCV特有的214个五肽相对应的十五聚体寡脱氧核苷酸序列进行的BLAST分析表明，几乎所有这些序列都存在于人类基因组中，位于非编码链、内含子和/或假基因中，因此无法被翻译。目前的数据警示不要使用基于DNA的疫苗来对抗HCV感染，并强调肽段的独特性是设计有效的抗HCV免疫治疗方法的分子基础。
