Evolution of hepatitis C virus over the course of two liver transplantations

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a hepatotropic virus with a positive sense RNA genome. Due to is errorprone replication cycle, the HCV genome has a high mutation rate with HCV forming a so called quasispecies of slightly differing viruses within the patient. Here, the virus population derived from patient serum samples was characterised in a patient who received two liver transplantations. HCV RNA was isolated from the sera, converted into cDNA and amplified via PCR. These amplicons were sequenced using the MiSeq v2 (2x250bp) platform (Illumina) with an average sequencing depth of ~4000 reads The viral quasispecies from before and after each liver transplantation was analysed.

丙型肝炎病毒（Hepatitis C virus, HCV）是一类具有正链RNA基因组的嗜肝病毒。由于其复制周期具备易错性，HCV基因组拥有较高的突变率，可在患者体内形成由序列存在细微差异的病毒构成的所谓病毒准种（quasispecies）。本研究针对一名接受两次肝移植术的患者，对其血清样本来源的病毒种群展开表征分析：从患者血清中分离HCV RNA，将其反转录为互补DNA（cDNA）并通过聚合酶链式反应（PCR）进行扩增；采用Illumina公司的MiSeq v2（2×250bp）测序平台对扩增子（amplicons）进行测序，平均测序深度约为4000条reads；最终对每次肝移植手术前后的病毒准种开展了分析。