RT Journal Article SR Electronic(1) A1 Kato, Nobuyuki A1 Ikeda, Masanori A1 Sugiyama, Kazuo A1 Mizutani, Tetsuya A1 Tanaka, Torahiko A1 Shimotohno, KunitadaYR 1998 T1 Hepatitis C virus population dynamics in human lymphocytes and hepatocytes infected in vitro. JF Journal of General Virology, VO 79 IS 8 SP 1859 OP 1869 DO https://doi.org/10.1099/0022-1317-79-8-1859 PB Microbiology Society, SN 1465-2099, AB We previously found two cell lines (MT-2 and PH5CH) that were susceptible to hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Analysis of the infectivity of sera from HCV-positive blood donors for MT-2 and PH5CH cells suggested the cell tropism of HCV. To investigate further the cell tropism of HCV, the dynamics of HCV populations during culture were examined using three MT-2 clones and three PH5CH clones, infected with inoculum 1B-2. To type HCV populations in these infected cells, the HCV hypervariable region 1 (HVR1) in these cloned cells was characterized by sequence analysis and HpaII digestion analysis, which could distinguish three major HVR1 types (I, II and III) derived from the inoculum 1B-2. It was found that genomes containing HVR1 type I became predominant in MT-2 clones, and genomes containing HVR1 type II became predominant in PH5CH clones during culture after inoculation. These results suggest that inoculum 1B-2 contains both lymphotropic and hepatotropic HCV species, which can be distinguished by HVR1 type. To search for cell type- specific sequences in regions other than HVR1, three HCV cDNA clones (3·4 kb of the 5′ noncoding region to the nonstructural 2 region) containing HVR1 type I obtained from HCV-infected MT-2C cells, and three HCV cDNA clones containing HVR1 type II obtained from HCV-infected PH5CH7 cells were sequenced. Following a comparison of the sequences, 11 amino acids were identified as candidates for determinants of the cell tropism of HCV., UL https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/0022-1317-79-8-1859