(A) Diagrams of possible interaction between HCV 5’UTR and miR-122. (B) Sequence alignment of miR-122 and its mutant derivatives, miR-122-mt1, -mt2, -mt3, -mt4, -mt5, -mt6, -mt7, -mt8, -mt15 or -mt16. (C) Intracellular HCV-RNA levels of 751-122KO cells infected with JFH1 in the presence of mimic control, miR-122 or its mutant derivatives were determined at 72 hpi by qRT-PCR. (D) Various pHH-JFH1 plasmids encoding HCV mutants at miR-122 interaction sites were transfected into Huh7.5.1 cells and infectious titers in the culture supernatants at 3 dpi were determined by focus formation assay. Error bars indicate the standard deviation of the mean and asterisks indicate significant differences (*P < 0.05; **P < 0.01) versus the results for the control.