FIG. 1.
Characterization of the HBeAg infection marker. (A) The specificity of the HBeAg as an infection marker was assessed by infecting HepaRG cells with either WT virions, noninfectious Myr− virions, or WT viruses incubated with the entry inhibitor preS/2-48myr (25). (B) The linear relationship between the HBeAg level and the amount of virus used to infect cells was demonstrated by infecting HepaRG cells with serial dilutions of a WT inoculum. The black line corresponds to the experimental linear regression calculated at the indicated data points. (C) The kinetics of HBeAg secretion in the culture supernatant of infected cells was determined. The input corresponds to the culture medium containing viruses, which were prepared to infect HepaRG cells, before the incubation with cells, and unbound corresponds to the same medium after overnight incubation with cells. For all experiments, standard deviations were calculated by the analysis of three experiments. AU, arbitrary units.