Ward, JC orcid.org/0000-0001-9867-393X, Bowyer, S, Chen, S et al. (4 more authors) (2020) Insights into the unique characteristics of hepatitis C virus genotype 3 revealed by development of a robust sub-genomic DBN3a replicon. Journal of General Virology. ISSN 0022-1317
Abstract
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is an important human pathogen causing 400 000 chronic liver disease-related deaths annually. Until recently, the majority of laboratory-based investigations into the biology of HCV have focused on the genotype 2 isolate, JFH-1, involving replicons and infectious cell culture systems. However, genotype 2 is one of eight major genotypes of HCV and there is great sequence variation among these genotypes (>30 % nucleotide divergence). In this regard, genotype 3 is the second most common genotype and accounts for 30 % of global HCV cases. Further, genotype 3 is associated with both high levels of inherent resistance to direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy, and a more rapid progression to chronic liver diseases. Neither of these two attributes are fully understood, thus robust genotype 3 culture systems to unravel viral replication are required. Here we describe the generation of robust genotype 3 sub-genomic replicons (SGRs) based on the adapted HCV NS3-NS5B replicase from the DBN3a cell culture infectious clone. Such infectious cell culture-adaptive mutations could potentially promote the development of robust SGRs for other HCV strains and genotypes. The novel genotype 3 SGRs have been used both transiently and to establish stable SGR-harbouring cell lines. We show that these resources can be used to investigate aspects of genotype 3 biology, including NS5A function and DAA resistance. They will be useful tools for these studies, circumventing the need to work under the biosafety level 3 (BSL3) containment required in many countries.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Authors. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution. |
Keywords: | hepatitis C virus, sub-genomic replicon, genotype 3, NS5A |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Molecular and Cellular Biology (Leeds) > Molecular Virology (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Molecular and Cellular Biology (Leeds) > Virology 1 (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 15 Sep 2020 10:23 |
Last Modified: | 15 Sep 2020 10:23 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Microbiology Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1099/jgv.0.001486 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:165452 |