Figure 1

The features of LDAg amino acid sequences of HDV and the synthetic oligonucleotides encoding the 13-amino-acid peptide of LDAg. (A) The amino acid (in one-letter symbols) alignment of full-length of LDAg from the three genotypes. Genotype I is from American strain (accession number M28267), genotype II from Taiwan-3 strain (accession number U19598), and genotype III from Peru strain (accession number L22063). The putative clathrin binding domains are shown by rectangle boxes and the last 19 or 20 amino acids of LDAg are highlighted by bold face letters. The consensus amino acids for post-translational modification are indicated as follows: Ac (acetylation) at amino acid 72, Pi (phosphorylation) at positions of 2, 123, and 177 and Py (isoprenylation) at the position 211. The amino acid positions are indicated by numbers. (B) Two complementary oligonucleotides were designed for expression of the corresponding short amino acid sequences (as indicated in one-letter symbols above the oligonucletides) of LDAg. The 5'- and 3'-end of the oligonucleotides were designed to include the restriction sites Eco RI and Sal I, respectively. The restriction site immediately next to Sal I is Eco RV, which was designed specifically to allow quick clone selection.