Hepatitis C virus whole genome position weight matrix and robust primer design

作者：Qiu Ping^*; Cai Xiao Yan; Wang Luquan; Greene Jonathan R; Malcolm Bruce

来源：BMC Microbiology, 2002, 2: 29.

DOI：10.1186/1471-2180-2-29

Background: The high degree of sequence heterogeneity found in Hepatitis C virus (HCV) isolates, makes robust nucleic acid-based assays difficult to generate. Polymerase chain reaction based techniques, require efficient and specific sequence recognition. Generation of robust primers capable of recognizing a wide range of isolates is a difficult task.
Results: A position weight matrix (PWM) and a consensus sequence were built for each region of HCV and subsequently assembled into a whole genome consensus sequence and PWM. For each of the 10 regions, the number of occurrences of each base at a given position was compiled. These counts were converted to frequencies that were used to calculate log odds scores. Using over 100 complete and 14,000 partial HCV genomes from GenBank, a consensus HCV genome sequence was generated along with a PWM reflecting heterogeneity at each position. The PWM was used to identify the most conserved regions for primer design.
Conclusions: This approach allows rapid identification of conserved regions for robust primer design and is broadly applicable to sets of genomes with all levels of genetic heterogeneity.

• 出版日期2002