Preliminary analysis of gene expression profiles in HepG2 cell line induced by different genotype core proteins of HCV.

In present investigation, we constructed recombinants expressing the HCV genotypes 1b, 2a, and 4d core proteins, and established human hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2) cell line that expressed various genotype core proteins. The gene expression profiles in the cells expressing different HCV genotype core proteins were compared with those in the control by microarray analysis. In data analysis, a threshold was set to eliminate all genes that were not increased or decreased by 2.5-fold change in a comparison between the transfected cells and control cells. The preliminary microarray analysis suggests that the gene expression profiles regulated by three kinds of genotype core proteins are mainly involved in transport, signal transduction, regulation of transcription, protease activity, etc., and that some pathogenesis/oncogenesis gene expressions are up/down- regulated simultaneously in the HepG2 cell line. The data suggest that each core protein has its gene expressions profile and that the profiles are implicated in HCV replication and pathogenesis, which may open up a novel way to understand the function of the HCV variant core proteins biological and their pathogenic mechanism.