Construction of the hepatitis C virus core gene recombinant plasmid and its expression in hepatoblastoma 7721 cells

Aim: To construct the recombinant plasmid containing hepatitis C virus core gene and express it in hepatoblastoma 7721 cells. Methods: The HCV C gene coding region cutted from the pBRTMHCV1 3011 plasmid was inserted into the eukaryotic expression plasmid pcDNA3 to construct the recombinant plasmid pcDNAHCV C which was then expressed transiently using lipofectamine technique under the control of CMV promoter of pcDNA3 in the 7721 cells. Results: The enzyme cutting identification showed that HCV C gene fragment was cloned into pcDNA3 eukaryote vectors. The expressed product with a relative molecular mass ( M r) about 22 000 was detected by SDS PAGE and Western blot. Conclusion: HCV C gene fragment may be inserted into eukaryote expression vector pcDNA3 and expressed in hepatoblastoma 7721 cells. It provided us a possible method for the further study of gene immunization in developing HCV genetic vaccine and treating HCV infection.