Open AccessReplicative Competence of the T131I, K141E, and G145R Surface Variants of Hepatitis B Virus
Author(s) -
Saffie Jammeh,
Howard Thomas,
Peter Karayiannis
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the journal of infectious diseases (online. university of chicago press)/the journal of infectious diseases
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.69
H-Index - 252
eISSN - 1537-6613
pISSN - 0022-1899
DOI - 10.1086/521198
Subject(s) - virology , hepatitis b virus , biology , virus , mutagenesis , dna , plasmid , hepatitis b virus pre beta , rna , viral replication , hepadnaviridae , gene , hepatitis b virus dna polymerase , mutation , genetics
Variants of hepatitis B surface antigen have been described in different clinical settings, but their replicative capacity in vitro has remained unexplored. Point mutations leading to sT131I, sK141E, and sG145R amino-acid substitutions were engineered by site-directed mutagenesis into an infectious plasmid clone of the virus. The mutated constructs were transfected into Huh7 cells, and their replication capacity was documented by LightCycler (Roche Diagnostics) measurements of virion-associated hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA, intracellular relaxed circular double-stranded DNA, and pregenomic RNA. The sT131I and sG145R variants replicated with efficiency equal to that of the wild type, whereas the sK141E variant was replication impaired.