The putative envelope 2 (E2) gene of hepatitis C virus (HCV) contains a hig
hly variable region referred to as hypervariable region 1 (HVR1). We hypoth
esized that this genetic variability is driven by immune selection pressure
, rather than representing the accumulation of random mutations in a region
with relatively little functional constraint. To test this hypothesis, we
examined the E2 sequence of a human inoculum that was passaged through eigh
t chimpanzees, which appear to have a replicative rate (opportunity for cha
nce mutation) similar to that of humans. Acute-phase plasma samples from a
human (the inoculum) and six of eight serially infected chimpanzees were st
udied. For each, 33 cloned cDNAs were examined by a combined hetero-duplex-
single-stranded conformational polymorphism assay to assess quasispecies co
mplexity and optimize selection of clones with unique gel shift patterns (c
lonotypes) for sequencing. The sequence diversity of HCV was significantly
lower in the chimpanzees than in the humans, and during eight serial passag
es there was no change in the sequence of the majority clonotype from each
animal examined. Similarly, the rates of protein sequence altering (nonsyno
nymous) substitution were lower in the chimpanzees than in the humans. Thes
e findings demonstrate that nonsynonymous mutations indicate selection pres
sure rather than being an incidental result of HCV replication.