Fig 1.

Alignment of HCV 5′-untranslated sequences for two patients with HCV genotype 2a, in whom HCV RNA was undetectable by the CAP/CTM HCV v1.0 assay, against the sequence of a reference HCV genotype 2a strain (JFH-1). Nucleotide substitutions were found in the patient's sequences compared to the reference sequence: G to A at position 145 and C to T at position 169 in both cases and G to A at position 158 in case 2, within the putative binding site of the TaqMan probe. Primer and probe sequences were obtained from the Japanese Patent Office (patent no. 4638388).