Fig. 2.

Comparative binding of WT gC1qR and gC1qR deletion mutants with HCV core protein.

Preliminary microplate binding studies were first performed as above to compare the binding of biotinylated WT gC1qR and the 10 deletion and 1 substitution mutants to microtiter plate coated HCV core protein as described in the legend to Fig. 1. After three such tests, the deletion mutants that showed consistently diminished binding to HCV core were selected and further analyzed. Data shown in (A) include data of only the deletion mutants (out of 11 mutants) that reacted weakly with HCV core protein. The residue numbers indicate the segment of the deleted gC1qR region (Δ) and the location in the gC1qR 3D structure of one such deleted region is shown in red (B). The significance of data is indicated as: *p ≤ 0.05 and ***p ≤ 0.001.