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Journal of Virology, November 2009, p. 11989-11995, Vol. 83, No. 22
0022-538X/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JVI.01508-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Role of RNA Structures in Genome Terminal Sequences of the Hepatitis C Virus for Replication and Assembly{triangledown} ,{dagger}

Peter Friebe{ddagger} and Ralf Bartenschlager*

Department of Molecular Virology, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 345, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany

Received 20 July 2009/ Accepted 31 August 2009

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a positive-strand RNA virus replicating its genome via a negative-strand [(–)] intermediate. Little is known about replication signals residing in the 3' end of HCV (–) RNA. Recent studies identified seven stem-loop structures (SL-I', -IIz', -IIy', -IIIa', -IIIb', -IIIcdef', and -IV') in this region. In the present study, we mapped the minimal region required for RNA replication to SL-I' and -IIz', functionally confirmed the SL-IIz' structure, and identified SL-IIIa' to -IV' as auxiliary replication elements. In addition, we show that the 5' nontranslated region of the genome most likely does not contain cis-acting RNA structures required for RNA packaging into infectious virions.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Molecular Virology, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 345, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany. Phone: 49 6221 564569. Fax: 49 6221 564570. E-mail: Ralf_Bartenschlager{at}med.uni-heidelberg.de

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 9 September 2009.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jvi.asm.org/.

{ddagger} Present address: Division of Infectious Diseases, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.

Journal of Virology, November 2009, p. 11989-11995, Vol. 83, No. 22
0022-538X/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JVI.01508-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





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