Nucleotide sequence of a cDNA fragment of the hepatitis C virus genome derived directly from Korean healthy carriers

Abstract

A cDNA fragment of 622 bp for the middle region (NS3 to NS4a) of Hepatitis C virus (HCV) genome was obtained from plasma RNA extracts of three healthy Korean HCV carriers by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using reverse transcriptase, and its nucleotide sequence was determined. Its DNA sequence was compared with the published full sequences of two Japanese types and the chimpanzee derived prototype. The nucleotide sequence homology between the Korean type and the Japanese types 1 and 2 is 90.7% and 90.5%, respectively, while it shows 80.4% homology with the prototype. Amino acid homology shows 97.3%, 96.8% and 94.1%, respectively. These data show that the Korean type HCV-cDNA fragment shows higher nucleotide sequence homology with Japanese types than with the prototype in the middle region, while it shows similar homologies in amino acid level.