Fig. 4.

Phylogenetic relationships between HCV sequences in liver and plasma. The relationships between HCV E1E2 SGA sequences derived from selected hepatic segments and plasma were assessed by neighbour joining analysis. There was minimal evidence for clustering of SGA-derived sequences originating from the same hepatic segment. The upper phylogenetic trees denote sequences from patients 1, 4 and 5 (genotype 3) while the lower trees represent patients 2, 7 and 9 (genotype 1a). In each tree black squares denote SGA-plasma sequences, whereas coloured circles denote SGA-hepatic sequences derived from segment 1 (green), 3 (cyan), 6 (blue) or 7 (grey). Red triangles represent consensus nucleotide sequences obtained from each of the eight hepatic segments (A). Quantification of mean genetic distance between SGA-derived sequences from identical or different hepatic sites and plasma (B).