COMMUNICATION:‌ HEPATITIS B VIRUS PRECORE PROTEIN MODELING: AN EXPERIENCE FROM NEW DELHI, INDIA

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) genome infecting hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cases with special emphasis on mutation has been widely studied across the globe. However there is a paucity of information in proteomic level. The current study was aimed to analyze the structure and chemical composition of a core protein of HBV found in a HCC patient from New Delhi using bioinformatics software’s. An HCC case was diagnosed as per EASL 2001, guidelines and viral DNA was isolated followed by amplification of the core gene. The amplicon was sequenced commercially from Macrogen Korea and the nucleotide sequence was converted to amino acids using DNA 2.0. The protein sequence was than analysed using RaptorX for its structure and chemical composition. A total of 90 hydrogen bonds, 8 helices and 4 turns were found in this current protein model. However there were no strands in the model. Stable Ramachandran map was viewed. Highest numbers of Leucine were observed in the proposed structure. A stable protein model is successfully proposed in this study.