Similarity and diversity in sequence of HCV genome among Chinese, Japanese and American strains
Chen, W.R.; Okamoto, H.; Tao, Q.M.
Chinese Medical Journal 104(10): 825-829
1991
ISSN/ISBN: 0366-6999 PMID: 1661223 Document Number: 369097
To estimate the homology between Chinese HCV strain, Japanese HCV strain and American HCV strain, we isolated and sequenced 8 clones, representing a 277-long fragment of high diversity. Chinese HCV strain was found to be homologous only in 68.6-72.6% for nucleotide sequence and in 69.6-73.9% for amino acid sequence to American HCV strain, but in 83.4%-88.4% for nucleotide sequence and in 78.3-88.0% for amino acid sequence to Japanese main strain. The isolated strain may be the main strain in China, which can be divided into several substrains. This result is believed to be of paramount importance for the development of HCV detection method and vaccination as well as for the study on pathogenesis of HCV infection.