Jackson P, Petrik J, Alexander G J, Pearson G, Allain J P
Department of Haematology, University of Cambridge, England.
J Med Virol. 1997 Jan;51(1):67-79. doi: 10.1002/(sici)1096-9071(199701)51:1<67::aid-jmv11>3.0.co;2-1.
A series of 54 synthetic peptides, 15-20 residues long, that represented selected parts of the structural proteins of hepatitis C virus (HCV) were tested for immunoreactivity with a panel of 45 plasma samples from potential blood donors who were known to be seropositive for anti-HCV. Most of the ten peptides that represented the core protein showed reactivity with most of the panel samples. All except one of the 20 peptides that represented non-hypervariable regions of envelope proteins E1 and E2 showed little or no reactivity. In contrast, 18 of the the 24 peptides that represented variants of the hypervariable region 1 of the E2 protein reacted with at least one panel sample. Notably, 40% of the panel samples cross-reacted with two or more different peptides sequences some of which differed by more than 50%. Two panel samples each cross-reacted with seven different peptide sequences. The results suggest a broad anti-hypervariable region antibody specificity in many anti-HCV-seropositive samples and possible limits on the mutability of hypervariable region sequences. The work contributes to understanding the immunogenicity and persistence of HCV.
对一系列54种合成肽进行了测试，这些肽长度为15 - 20个残基，代表丙型肝炎病毒（HCV）结构蛋白的选定部分，用一组来自已知抗HCV血清阳性的潜在献血者的45份血浆样本检测其免疫反应性。代表核心蛋白的十种肽中的大多数与大多数样本呈反应性。代表包膜蛋白E1和E2非高变区的20种肽中，除一种外，其余的几乎没有或没有反应性。相比之下，代表E2蛋白高变区1变体的24种肽中有18种与至少一份样本发生反应。值得注意的是，40%的样本与两种或更多不同的肽序列发生交叉反应，其中一些肽序列的差异超过50%。两份样本各自与七种不同的肽序列发生交叉反应。结果表明，许多抗HCV血清阳性样本中存在广泛的抗高变区抗体特异性，并且高变区序列的可变性可能存在限制。这项工作有助于理解HCV的免疫原性和持续性。
