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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

A Protocol for Analyzing Hepatitis C Virus Replication
Published on: June 26, 2014
Tagging of NS5A expressed from a functional hepatitis C virus replicon
Christopher J McCormick1, Sophie Maucourant1, Stephen Griffin1
1Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
Abstract:
Knowledge of how hepatitis C virus (HCV) proteins associate with components of the host cell to form a functional replication complex is still limited. To address this issue, HCV replicon constructs were generated where either green fluorescent protein (GFP) or the Propionibacterium shermanii transcarboxylase domain (PSTCD) was introduced into the NS5A coding region. Insertion of both GFP and PSTCD was tolerated well, allowing formation of stable replicon-containing cell lines that contained viral protein and transcript levels that were comparable to those of an unmodified parental replicon. Cell lines generated from the GFP-tagged NS5A replicon allowed live-cell visualization of the location of NS5A. Cell lines generated from the PSTCD-tagged replicons allowed rapid and efficient precipitation of the PSTCD-tagged NS5A, as well as other HCV non-structural proteins, using streptavidin-coated magnetic beads. Both replicons represent useful tools that offer different but complementary ways of examining replication-complex formation in cells.
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