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Abstract
The Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is composed of a positive strand RNA which codes for 10 proteins, of which 3 are structural proteins. These proteins are C for the core, E1 and E2 for envelope proteins. Core undergoes two cleavages during its maturation. The second cleavage is carried out by the signal peptide peptidase (spp). We still do not know the importance of maturation the spp on the type of viral particles produced. We showed that the pseudo-particles produced without cleavage by the spp remain associated with membrane structures, that spp is important for the formation of non-enveloped pseudo-particles, and that the presence of envelope proteins E1E2 in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is important for the presentation of the site of cleavage to spp. These results were obtained with the yeast Pichia pastoris, thus showing the utility and the effectiveness of this eukaryotic expression system.
