Abstract
Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) causes serious clinical problems, such as liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Current antiviral treatments suppress HBV; however, the clinical cure rate remains low. Basic research on HBV is indispensable to eradicate and cure HBV. Genetic alterations are defined by nucleotide substitutions and canonical forms of structural variations (SVs), such as insertion, deletion and duplication. Additionally, genetic changes inconsistent with the canonical forms have been reported, and these have been termed complex SVs. Detailed analyses of HBV using bioinformatical applications have detected complex SVs in HBV genomes. Sequence gaps and low sequence similarity have been observed in the region containing complex SVs. Additionally, insertional motif sequences have been observed in HBV strains with complex SVs. Following the analyses of complex SVs in the HBV genome, the role of SVs in the genetic diversity of orthohepadnavirus has been investigated. SV polymorphisms have been detected in comparisons of several species of orthohepadnaviruses. As mentioned, complex SVs are composed of multiple SVs. On the contrary, SV polymorphisms are observed as insertions of different SVs. Up to a certain point, nucleotide substitutions cause genetic differences. However, at some point, the nucleotide sequences are split into several particular patterns. These SVs have been observed as polymorphic changes. Different species of orthohepadnaviruses possess SVs which are unique and specific to a certain host of the virus. Studies have shown that SVs play an important role in the HBV genome. Further studies are required to elucidate their virologic and clinical roles.
Highlights
Published: 12 March 2021Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is among the causes of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)
The characteristics of complex structural variations (SVs) were elucidated from analyses of 70 HBV strains with complex SVs
The existence of SV polymorphisms was demonstrated based on techniques used for analyses of complex SVs
Summary
Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is among the causes of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Nucleotide substitution plays an important role in HBV genetic changes. The HBV genotype is defined by nucleotide substitution of greater than. In an analysis of HBV mutations related to HBeAg seroconversion, core promoter (CP) mutations (A1762T/G1764A) were found [13]. Recombination is another important genetic change in HBV [14,15,16,17,18,19]. The differences between HBV genotype B in Japan and Taiwan were explained by intergenotypic recombination. Genetic alteration of HBV has been explained by single nucleotide changes, such as nucleotide substitutions, CP and PC mutations and recombination
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