DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.7314/APJCP.2012.13.12.5917 Hepatitis C Virus-Proteins, Diagnosis, Treatment and New Approaches for Vaccine Development

There are two UTRs located at the 5’and 3 ’ termini called cis-active RNA elements which are essential for protein translation. The virus translation is cap-independent by IRES located at the 5’_UTR. A single precursor polyprotein is approximately 3010 amino acids, (NH2-C-E1-E2-p7-NS2-NS3-NS4A-NS4B-NS5A-NS5B-COOH) be cleaved into at least 10 different proteins. Structural proteins Core, E1, E2 and p7 are released from the polyprotein after cleavage by cellular proteases and some non-structural proteins such as NS2, NS3, NS4A, have been produced by virus-encoded proteases (de Vicente et al., 2009; Chatel-Chaix, et al., 2011). Core protein consists of first 191 amino acids and can be divided into three domains. Domain 1 (amino acids 1-117), Domain 2 (amino acids 118-174) is more hydrophobic and Domai