THE EFFECT OF HCV F AND CORE PROTEIN ON THE APOPTOSIS OF HEPG2 CELLS

The F protein is expressed by a +1 ribosomal frameshift during HCV translation. Discovery of F protein expressed from the HCV core coding sequence challenges properties assigned to core protein. In this study, we aimed to investigate the functional role of F protein in the change of cell-cycle on cellular levels. Cells were stably transfected using Lipofectamine 2000 with a EGFP reporter construction of different plasmids, pEGFP-F or pEGFP-core. Fluorescence microscope and Western blotting assays were performed at 48h of post-transfection to confirm successful transfections. Cells transfected with pEGFP-F or pEGFP-core plasmids were selected and tested to show that differences in their growth rates are due to endogenous core or F expression. We concluded that F protein inhibits apoptosis of transfected cells, contrast to parent cells, but less than core protein.