Patient characteristics (acute infection): longitudinal samples from 3 acutely infected patients

• Very high viral loads • ALT peaked then fell• All 3 patients failed to clear HCV infection, and became chronically infected

Amplicons of HCV quasispecies analyzed

5’ UTR: untranslated, very low variability, used for subtypingCore: translated, well conservedE1/E2: envelope, includes HVR1 hypervariable region

Regions studied

DNA barcoding

5'UTR 1 342core 342 915E1 915 1491E2 1491 2580P7 2580 2769NS2 2769 3420NS3 3420 5313NS4A 5313 5475NS4B 5475 6258NS5A 6258 7602NS5B 7602 93783'UTR 9378 9646

HCV hypervariable regions