Figure 2.

Conservation analysis of HBc sequences. A total of 9,386 HBc sequences were downloaded from the HBVdb database and analyzed with the Clustal Omega sequence aligning program. As the hydrophobic effect is the main force that directs capsid assembly, acidic residues, basic residues and those with long side chains were mutated (labeled in red). ‘.’ Denotes relatively conserved; ‘:’ denotes highly conserved and ‘*’ denotes completely conserved across 9,386 sequences. HBc, hepatitis B virus core protein.