丙型肝炎病毒非结构蛋白NS2在病毒包装中的作用

Role of Nonstructural Protein NS2 in Hepatitis C Virus Assembly

丙型肝炎病毒(HCV)是一种单股正链RNA病毒,是导致慢性肝炎的主要病原体之一.近年体外培养体系成功构建后HCV分子生物学的研究获得重要进展,HCV生活周期的各个步骤得到了深入研究.由于NS2蛋白既不是病毒粒子结构成分又不是病毒RNA复制必需成分,因此,近年有较多研究关注于NS2对病毒包装的影响.突变分析表明,NS2蛋白的N端保守位点及跨膜结构对病毒包装至关重要,C端蛋白酶蛋白酶结构域而非其蛋白酶活性为病毒包装所需.此外,NS2蛋白与病毒结构蛋白,非结构蛋白以及多种宿主因子存在相互作用,并在病毒包装过程中形成多种复合体,本文对这些研究进行了归纳总结.

Hepatitis C virus,an enveloped positive strand RNA virus,is a major cause of chronic hepatitis.Due to the development of infectious HCV cell culture system,the life cycle of HCV has been studied in details from the entry to the assembly and release steps.The role of NS2 in virion assembly attracts much attention because this molecule is not the components of the virion or the replicase.Mutation analysis indicates that the conserved amino acid and the transmembrane domain in the N terminal as well as the protease domain but not the protease activity in the C terminal are required for HCV assembly.NS2 protein is suggested to serve as the scaffold for virus assembly since it interacts with both structural and nonstructural proteins.The interactions of NS2 with host factors also play a role in the assembly step.Here we summarized the key amino acids in NS2 which are important for HCV assembly and the proteinprotein interactions of NS2 which are involved in HCV assembly.