Hepatitis B virus pathogenesis: Fresh insights into hepatitis B virus RNA

Figure 3 Hepatitis B virus-related RNAs alone have diverse effects on the host. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) mRNAs and HBV-miR-3 are transcribed from cccDNA, while viral-human chimeric RNAs are transcribed from integrated HBV DNA. These RNAs, except HBV-CCNA2, have complementary lesion(s) to cellular micro RNAs (miRNAs) and act as miRNA sponges, in turn triggering upregulated expression of the miRNA target and resulting in the induction of HBV pathogenesis. HBV-CCNA2 promotes tumor development through the newly synthesized chimeric transcript, which has new splice sites in the pre-mRNA produced by viral DNA integration.