Check out our latest preprint – Cousineau SE and Sagan SM. BioRxiv 2022!

In Sophie’s latest manuscript entitled: “The cellular poly(rC)-binding protein 2 prevents the early steps of hepatitis C virus virion assembly”, we explored the role of PCBP2 in the HCV life cycle. We found that endogenous PCBP2 limits virion assembly, thereby indirectly promoting HCV translation and replication by increasing the translating/replicating pool of viral RNAs. Additionally, we found that the SLIIalt conformation of the viral 5’ UTR was important for efficient virion assembly. The latter may at least partially explain the success of HCV cell culture models and could have implications for the outcome of HCV infection.  

Check it out here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.12.488029v1