Abstract
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.
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