“Defective” mutations of hepatitis D viruses in chronic hepatitis D patients

Figure 2 Western blot analysis of wild type and defective HDAgs. The wild type and defective expression plasmids of HDAg (see Methods and Figure 1) were transfected into the Huh-7 hepatoma cell line. Cellular proteins were analyzed by Western blotting. Wild type small and large HDAgs (HDAg-S and HDAg-L) were in proper positions and served as controls. Defective HDAgs (HDAg-L-18d and HDAg-S-53d) were of different molecular weights due to mutations. HDAg-S-13d had a mutation between the stop codons for the small and the large HDAg. Therefore, the small HDAg was expressed and was electrophoretically correct.