ABSTRACT
Icosahedral hepatitis B virus nucleocapsid or core particle plays a central role in the production of an infectious viral Dane particle. During its formation, the core particle must recruit into its structure the essential ingredients of viral replication, the pregenomic ribonucleic acid (RNA) and the viral reverse transcriptase. The formation of a replication-competent nucleocapsid demands very selective packaging of the viral pregenome RNA, which presumably depends on very specific interactions between core protein and a cis-acting packaging signal located within the pregenome RNA. A single contiguous open reading frame (ORF) encodes the capsid protein. The two major components of the HBV core particle are the viral nucleic acid and a single structural core polypeptide of 21 kDa. Phosphocore has also been reported in mammalian cells transfected with the HBV core gene. The immune response to core antigen/e antigen (HBc/HBe) may play an important role in the progress of hepatitis infection.
