Recombinant HBV/Hepatitis B Virus HBe adw

Biomolecules

Hepatitis B is one of a few known non-retroviral viruses which employ reverse transcriptionas a part of its replication process. (HIV, a completely unrelated virus, also uses reverse transcription, but it is a retrovirus.) HBV invades the cell by binding to surface receptor and become internalized. The viral core particles then migrate to the hepatocyte nucleus and the partially double-stranded, relaxed circular genomes (RC-DNA) are repaired to form a covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA), which is the template for viral genomic and sub-genomic RNAs by cellular RNA polymerase II. Of these, the pregenomic RNA(pgRNA is selectively packaged into progeny capsids and is then reverse-transcribed into new RC-DNA. The core can either bud into the endoplasmic reticulum to be enveloped or exported from the cell or recycled back into the genome for conversion to cccDNA. The, E. coli, derived recombinant protein contains the HBV core immunodominant region amino acids 1-186, and fused to a His tag.

Immunoreactive with sera HBV-infected individuals.