Efficient in vitro systems to study the life cycle of hepatitis C virus (HCV) were recently developed for JFH1 (genotype 2a), which has unique replication capacity in Huh7 cells. We developed 4a/JFH1 intergenotypic recombinants containing the structural genes (Core, E1, and E2), p7, and all or part of NS2 of the 4a prototype strain ED43 that, after transfection of Huh7.5 cells with RNA transcri...

Genotype 2a JFH1 virus has substantially contributed to the progress of HCV biology by allowing entire viral life cycle of HCV in cell culture. Using this genotype 2a virus, casein kinase II (CKII) was previously identified as a crucial host factor in virus assembly by phosphorylating NS5A. Since most of the prior studies employed genotype 2a JFH1 or JFH1-based intragenotypic chimera, we used g...

Recently, a production system for infectious particles of hepatitis C virus (HCV) utilizing the genotype 2a JFH1 strain has been developed. This strain has a high capacity for replication in the cells. Cyclosporine (CsA) has a suppressive effect on HCV replication. In this report, we characterize the anti-HCV effect of CsA. We observe that the presence of viral structural proteins does not infl...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a leading cause of chronic liver diseases worldwide, but treatment options are limited. Basic HCV research required for vaccine and drug development has been hampered by inability to culture patient isolates, and to date only the JFH1 (genotype 2a) recombinant replicates spontaneously in hepatoma cells and releases infectious virus. A JFH1 chimera with the 5...

BACKGROUND Recently, a hepatitis C virus (HCV) cell-culture system was developed that employed strain JFH1 (genotype 2a), and JFH1-based intra- and intergenotypic recombinants now permit functional studies of the structural genes (Core, E1, and E2), p7, and NS2 of genotypes 1-4. The goal was to adapt the system to employ genotype 5. METHODS Huh7.5 cells infected with SA13/JFH1, containing Cor...

Chronic liver disease caused by infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) is an important global health problem that currently affects 170 million people. A major impediment in HCV research and drug development has been the lack of culture systems supporting virus production. This obstacle was recently overcome by using JFH1-based full-length genomes that allow production of viruses infectious bot...

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 2a isolate JFH1 represents the only cloned HCV wild-type sequence capable of efficient replication in cell culture as well as in vivo. Previous reports have pointed to NS5B, the viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), as a major determinant for efficient replication of this isolate. To understand the contribution of the JFH1 NS5B gene at the molecular lev...