New Method Disrupts Hepatitis C Virion Production

**HCV** is a significant human pathogen, infecting more than three percent of the world's population. The incidence of infection in the United States has been estimated to be as high as 4 million cases. In the March issue of the journal PLoS Pathogens, Timothy Tellinghuisen, an assistant professor in the Department of Infectology at Scripps Florida, and his colleagues describe how they used **mutations** of the viral **NS5A phosphoprotein** to disrupt virus particle production at an early stage of assembly. NS5A has long been proposed as a regulator of events in the HCV life cycle, but exactly how it orchestrates these events has been unclear. More "sciencedaily":[ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080321093114.htm]

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