HBV DNA genome co-transfection procedure for the evaluation of relative fitness

PLoS One. 2017 May 4;12(5):e0175543. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0175543. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has a high mutation rate and exists as a mixture of genetically different but closely related variants. We present a HBV DNA co-transfection fitness assay and use it to evaluate the relative fitness of different HBV variants in two scenarios: seroconversion process and occupation of an ecological niche. In the seroconversion experiment, subgenotype D1 (sgtD1) deletion (1763-1770) had significantly lower fitness comparing with both sgtD1 wild type and sgtD1mut G1896A, while, in the case of occupation of ecological niche experiment, the results showed the same relative fitness between all of the genotype combinations, except F1b-F4. In this case sgtF1b clearly overgrow sgtF4, which is in accordance with the observation that F1b is the most prevalent in the new infections in Argentina. In summary, we present a method aimed to evaluate HBV viral fitness which improve the analysis of the relative frequency of viral variants during the HBV infection process.

MeSH terms

  • Cloning, Molecular
  • DNA, Viral / genetics*
  • Hepatitis B virus / genetics*
  • Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • Transfection*

Substances

  • DNA, Viral

Grants and funding

This work was supported by: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) [PIP2015-0595CO], Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (ANPCyT) [PICT2014-1672] and UBACyT [20020130100505BA 2014-2017].