Figure 1

Nucleotide sequence of 5' UTR in viral quasispecies. 5' UTR from a pool of HCV infected sera was RT-PCR amplified using primers p1 and P2 and ~340 bp product spanning the entire 5' UTR was cloned into pGEM-T plasmid. Single colony from transformed JM109 cells were used for plasmid DNA purification and sequencing. NO1 and NO2 are representative clones from 17 isolates of 5' UTR fragments. The bold sequences represent targets for antisense phosphothioate oligonucleotides (S-ODN1 and S-ODN2). Highly conserved triplets necessary for efficient initiation of translation are shown in bold underlined letters.