Hepatitis C virus (HCV) core protein is essential for virus assembly. HCV core protein was expressed and purified. Aptamers against core protein were raised through the selective evolution of ligands by the exponential enrichment approach. Detection of HCV infection by core aptamers and the antiviral activities of aptamers were characterized. The mechanism of their anti-HCV activity was determi...

Short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) efficiently inhibit gene expression by RNA interference. Here, we report the efficient inhibition by DNA-based vector-derived shRNAs of core protein expression in Huh-7 cells. The shRNAs were designed to target the core region of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) genome. The core region is the most conserved region in the HCV genome, making it an ideal target for shRNAs. W...

background and aims: dna constructs containing hcv antigens have become one of the vaccine candidates for induction of anti-hcv cellular and humoral immunity. in this study, we constructed a novel expressing vector harboring a fusion sequence derived from an overlapping fragment in the middle of ns3 and a truncated core fragment to avoid troubles reported to be associated with full gene express...

The maturation and subcellular localization of hepatitis C virus (HCV) core protein were investigated with both a vaccinia virus expression system and CHO cell lines stably transformed with HCV cDNA. Two HCV core proteins, with molecular sizes of 21 kDa (p21) and 23 kDa (p23), were identified. The C-terminal end of p23 is amino acid 191 of the HCV polyprotein, and p21 is produced as a result of...

Recently, we demonstrated that yeast protein evolutionary rate at the level of individual amino acid residues scales linearly with degree of solvent accessibility. This residue-level structure-evolution relationship is sensitive to protein core size: surface residues from large-core proteins evolve much faster than those from small-core proteins, while buried residues are equally constrained in...