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. 2020 Sep 22;21(18):6955. doi: 10.3390/ijms21186955

Figure 1.

Figure 1

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) genome. The polyprotein open reading frame (ORF) is translated to a single polyprotein, which is co- and posttranslationally processed into the mature gene products, including the structural and the non-structural (NS) proteins. The gene segment for the NS5B replicase is located at the end of the polyprotein ORF. The HCV RNA genome contains several cis-elements, which are involved in the regulation of translation and genome replication [23,29,30,31]. In the 5′UTR, the internal ribosome entry site (IRES) element mediates translation of the polyprotein ORF. The stop codon is indicated by an asterisk. Several important RNA secondary structure elements, which are involved in HCV genome replication, are located at the very 5′- and 3′-ends of the genome. Other replication cis-elements are also located in the coding region, in particular, in the 3′-terminal portion of the NS5B replicase gene segment. These elements include the stem-loops 5BSL3.1, 3.2 (also called CRE for cis-replication element), and 3.3. microRNA-122 (miR-122) target sites are indicated by small boxes.