THE MOLECULAR-BIOLOGY OF HEPATITIS-C VIRUS

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is one of the main causative agents for transfusion associated- and sporadic cases of non-A, non-B hepatitis throughout the world. HCV has a positive strand RNA of about 9400 nucleotides, as its genome, whose organization is similar to those of animal pestiviruses or human flaviviruses. In spite of the lack of the effective replication system in tissue culture cells, parts of the viral genome were expressed under the control of foreign promoters and the synthesized viral protein has been used for diagnostic assays. © 1993 Academic Press. All rights reserved.