FIG. 2.

SSCP analysis of NS5A PCR products obtained from pretreatment samples from HCV-1b-infected patients. One patient’s sample is analyzed per lane. The SSCP patterns were different from one patient to the next and were characterized by the presence of two to eight bands (mean, 3.5 ± 1.5) migrating to different positions in the gel. These patterns suggested that the patients harbored mixes of different sequences in the region of interest, i.e., that this region had a quasispecies distribution.