viruses Article Expression Level of Small Envelope Protein in Addition to Sequence Divergence inside Its Major Hydrophilic Region Contributes to More Efficient Surface Antigen Secretion by Hepatitis B Virus Subgenotype D2 than Subgenotype A2 Qianru Wang 1, Shuwen Fu 1, Jing Zhang 1, Quan Yuan 2, Jisu Li 3, Ningshao Xia 2 , Yu-Mei Wen 1, Yongxiang Wang 1 and Shuping Tong 1,3,* 1 Department of Pathobiology, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecular Virology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China;
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[email protected] (S.F.);
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[email protected] (Y.-M.W.);
[email protected] (Y.W.) 2 State Key Laboratory of Molecular Vaccinology and Molecular Diagnostics, School of Public Health, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361102 China;
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[email protected] (N.X.) 3 Liver Research Center, Rhode Island Hospital and Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI 02903, USA;
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[email protected] Received: 12 August 2020; Accepted: 30 August 2020; Published: 1 September 2020 Abstract: Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) promotes persistent hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. It primarily corresponds to small (S) envelope protein secreted as subviral particles. We previously found that genotype D clones expressed less S protein than genotype A clones but showed higher extracellular/intracellular ratio of HBsAg suggesting more efficient secretion. The current study aimed to characterize the underlying mechanism(s) by comparing a subgenotype A2 clone (geno5.4) with a subgenotype D2 clone (geno1.2). Five types of full-length or subgenomic constructs were transfected to Huh7 cells at different dosage.