Assays for measuring hepadnaviral supercoiled DNA

Amajor reason for treatment failure during antiviral therapy of chronic hepatitis B infection is thought to be the persistence of the key replicative intermediate, the viral covalently closed circular (CCC) or supercoiled DNA (1,2). Investigators studying the structure and function of hepadnaviral CCC DNA (3) have provided evidence that suggests that this structure exists in the nucleus of infected hepatocytes as a heterogeneous population of viral minichromosomes, which range from half to fully chromatinized, thought to be owing to their association with variable numbers of nucleosomes.