Qualitative, quantitative and structural analysis of noncoding regions of classical swine fever virus genome

Classical swine fever virus (CSFV) is the pathogen of the swine fever. Unde rstanding of the replication and expression of its genome is the basis for research of the pathogenicity for CSFV and development of antiviral drug. T he noncoding regions (NCRs) of CSFV are the main regulatory regions for rep lication and expression. Qualitative, quantitative and structural analysis of 3 ' NCRs and 5 ' NCRs was done in order to locate the regulatory region in the NCRs and to character the NCRs. The sites, conserved sequences and s tructural elements related to the initiation of replication and expression were extracted from 17 3 ' NCRs and 56 5 ' NCRs. Those cis-elements may be initial recognition sites for replication, binding sites for transcription factors of host cell and interacting sites for initiation of protein synthe sis, based on which a mechanism for the replication and expression of CSFV was brought forth. This research offers the direction for further experimen t and lays down a basis for the research on hepatitis C virus (HCV), other pestiviruses and plus-strand RNA viruses.