Figure 1.

HCV genome organization. The HCV Open Reading Frame encodes three structural proteins, a small protein p7 ion channel, and 6 non-structural (NS) proteins. The structural proteins consist of core (c) proteins and envelop E proteins. The nonstructural proteins consist of NS2, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, NS5A, and NS5B types. Together, NS3/4A, NS4B, NS5A, and NS5B constitute the viral proteins of the replication machinery, which replicates the positive sense RNA genome through a negative strand intermediate. The viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase NS5B is the key enzyme of RNA synthesis