Gómez-Moreno Andoni, Ploss Alexander
Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Viruses. 2024 Apr 15;16(4):609. doi: 10.3390/v16040609.
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is the etiologic agent of chronic hepatitis B, which puts at least 300 million patients at risk of developing fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. HBV is a partially double-stranded DNA virus of the family. While HBV was discovered more than 50 years ago, many aspects of its replicative cycle remain incompletely understood. Central to HBV persistence is the formation of covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) from the incoming relaxed circular DNA (rcDNA) genome. cccDNA persists as a chromatinized minichromosome and is the major template for HBV gene transcription. Here, we review how cccDNA and the viral minichromosome are formed and how viral gene transcription is regulated and highlight open questions in this area of research.
乙型肝炎病毒（HBV）是慢性乙型肝炎的病原体，使至少3亿患者面临发展为肝纤维化、肝硬化和肝细胞癌的风险。HBV是该科的一种部分双链DNA病毒。虽然HBV在50多年前就已被发现，但其复制周期的许多方面仍未被完全理解。HBV持续存在的核心是由进入的松弛环状DNA（rcDNA）基因组形成共价闭合环状DNA（cccDNA）。cccDNA作为一种染色质化的微型染色体持续存在，是HBV基因转录的主要模板。在这里，我们综述了cccDNA和病毒微型染色体是如何形成的，以及病毒基因转录是如何被调控的，并强调了该研究领域中尚未解决的问题。
