Fig 1.

(A) Schematic diagram of the bicistronic Con1 replicon with Renilla luciferase or neomycin resistance genes. Hybrid replicons were constructed by replacing the entire NS5A coding region with sequences derived from the HCV4a-20, -21, and -23 clinical isolates. Each of the replicons contained an engineered S2204I adaptive mutation in NS5A. (B) Alignment of the N-terminal 100 amino acids of NS5A deduced from cDNA isolated from neomycin-resistant replicon cell lines. Amino acid identities are indicated with dots. Residues identified in this study as potentially important sites of resistance development in HCV4a are underlined.