RdRp

This is a polymerase derived from Hepatitis C Virus Strain 1b isolate Con1 which catalyses the replication of RNA from an RNA template, reffered to as NS5B in the contact of the HCV genome. Heterelogous expression of NS5B has been achieved in insect and bacterial hosts, with RNA-dependent RNA synthesis initiated de novo (Behrens et al., 1996; Lohmann et al., 1997). Structural studies indicate the hydrophobic C-terminal 21 amino acid residues cause insertion into the membrane with other intracellular protein-protein interactions implicated (Moradpour et al., 2004) making the final 63 bases essential for HCV RNA replication in eukaryotic cells (Moradpour et al., 2004). In prokaryotic cells the final 21 amino acids are expendable. RdRp initiates viral RNA synthesis with nucleotidyl transfer activity found within palm motifs A and C, with several amino acid residues implicated in nucleotide triphosphate contact (Bressanelli et al., 2002). NS5B activity has been demonstrated ''in vitro'', with synthesis of full length HCV RNA (Lohmann et al., 1997; Ferrari et al., 1999). 5’ and 3’ untranslated regions (UTRs) of the HCV genome contains ordered RNA structures, which are evolutionary conserved and contain crucial cis-acting elements for viral RNA replication. 150 nt in the 3’ termini of HCV RNA contains elements which are essential for RdRp binding and replication of viral RNA (Cheng et al., 1999; Yi and Lemon, 2003).

Click here to learn about our RdRp.

Click here to learn about our mutant RdRp.