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AssigneesHvidovre Hospital, The United States of America, as represented by the Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services
InventorsJudith M. Gottwein, Troels Kasper Hoyer Scheel, Robert Purcell, Jens Bukh
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The present invention relates to molecular approaches to the production of nucleic acid sequences, which comprises the genome of infectious hepatitis C virus. In particular, the invention provides nucleic acid sequences which comprise the genomes of infectious hepatitis C viruses of either genotype 3a (strain S52) or genotype 4a (strain ED43). The invention therefore relates to the use of the nucleic acid sequences and polypeptides encoded by all or part of the sequences in the development of vaccines and diagnostic assays for HCV and in the development of screening assays for the identification of antiviral agents for HCV. The invention therefore also relates to the use of viral particles derived from laboratory animals infected with S52 and ED43 viruses.
An isolated nucleic acid molecule comprising a mutated human hepatitis C virus genome of genotype 3a wherein said molecule encodes a nucleic acid sequence according to SEQ ID NO:3 wherein all of the sequences encoding the E1 gene, E2 gene, P7 gene, and NS2 gene sequences are deleted, a part of the Core gene sequence is deleted, and a heterologous reporter gene sequence is inserted, and wherein HCV genomic portions of the molecule with the deletions have a sequence identity of at least 98% to a reference SEQ ID NO:3 sequence wherein all of the E1 gene, E2 gene, P7 gene and NS2 gene sequences are deleted and wherein said part of said Core gene sequence is deleted.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.