HCV quasi-species analysis in different compartments from patients with and without HVR1 aa insertion.
(A) Analysis of HCV quasi species in plasma, liver, and PBMC2s of 2 patients with MC2 (patients 3 and 4) in whom an HVR1 aa insertion was detected. Upper panels illustrate the CFA profiles of HVR1 quasi-species variants isolated from the 3 different tissues. For each patient, one clone representing a plasma major variant was labeled with 32P and hybridized to 20 HVR1 clones from each of the 3 compartments. In each panel, lane 1 shows the homoduplex control, and lanes 2 to 21 show gel shift patterns of the 20 independent cDNA clones. Gel shift patterns representative of different HVR1 variants and their corresponding aa sequences are indicated. Below, deduced aa sequences of clones from the 3 tissues, selected on the basis of the CFA results, are reported. The 385 insertion, found in all the HCV variants from these patients, is indicated by an underlined letter. Dots indicate aa identity to plasma-derived probe. (B) Analysis of HCV quasi species in plasma, liver, and PBMC2s of 2 patients with MC2 (patients 11 and 12) with no sequence mutations in the HVR1. Upper panels illustrate the CFA profiles of HVR1 quasi-species variants isolated from the 3 different tissues. In each panel, lane 1 shows the homoduplex control, and lanes 2 to 21 show gel shift patterns of the 20 independent cDNA clones. Below, aa sequences of selected clones from the 3 compartments are aligned to the sequence of the CFA probe derived from plasma major variant.
