FIG 1.

Construction of HCV GT2 to -6 NS5B chimeric replicons. (A) Schematic diagram of 1b-Con1 or 1a-H77c replicons with Renilla luciferase and neomycin resistance genes. GT2 to -6 chimeric replicons were constructed by replacing the entire NS5B coding region of the parent replicon with patient-derived NS5Bs from GT3a for the 1a-H77c backbone and GT2b, -4a, -5a, or -6a for the 1b-Con1 backbone. Each of the replicons contained engineered adaptive mutations of E1202G in NS3 and S2204I in NS5A. All NS5B chimeric replicon cell lines exhibited luciferase activities comparable to those of the GT1a/1b parent cell lines. (B) Percent NS5B amino acid identity of HCV GT2 to -6 patient samples to 1b-Con1.