Figure 3.

HCV IRES mutations found in sequence signature strains isolated in South America. The 5'NCR sequences of strain HCV1b [16] is shown. The locations of the nucleotide mutations found in the sequence signature are shown in bold and a solid arrow indicates each particular substitution. Sequences previously identified to belong to a specific IRES domain [16] are indicated by colours and domain number is indicated bellow the sequence. IRES nucleotide substitutions positions previously reported in the literature [16] or in the HCV Database [14] are indicated in bold italics underlined. Each particular previously reported substitution is indicated by a dotted arrow. Δ means deletion. Numbers in the figure denote nucleotide position in HCV sequence according to strain HCV1b [16].