Fig 2.

Reactivity of vtHBsAgs expressed in transient transfection in commercial HBsAg assays corrected against the expression levels in cell lysates. The culture supernatants and cell lysates of transiently transfected cells expressing wt- and vtHBsAgs were collected at 48 h. wt- and vtHBsAgs were detected by the Architect system and HBsAg CMIA kits (Abbott Laboratories, Wiesbaden-Delkenheim, Germany) (A and B) and an HBsAg enzyme immunoassay (EIA) kit (Kehua, Shanghai, China) (C and D) according to the manufacturer's instructions. The reactivity of vtHBsAgs with the amino acid substitutions at position 145 (A and C) or 122 (B and D) was standardized by the relative expression levels of wt- and vtHBsAg based on the Western blotting result (Fig. 1) and is expressed as the percentage of the OD₄₅₀ of samples compared to that of the wtHBsAg. The average values from 4 replicates were calculated and given as the final reactivity of wt- or vtHBsAgs. CK, cells transfected with empty plasmid as a negative control.