The difficulties

in creating efficient immunoprophylaxis are in large part due to the high genetic variability of HCV: this relatively small enveloped virus with an approximately 10-kb nonsegmented, plus-strand RNA genome has a highly error-prone RNA-dependent RNA polymerase.2 As a result, HCV exists in the infected host not as a homogeneous population but rather as a large number of variants that are collectively called the quasispecies swarm.3 Therefore, HCV can rapidly respond to selective pressures to which it is subjected by antiviral drugs or cellular and humoral immune responses; this is conceivably a GSK1120212 manufacturer prerequisite for establishing and maintaining a chronic infection.4 For HCV to infect target cells, the viral envelope glycoproteins, E1 and E2, must interact with at least four (co)receptors on the hepatocyte surface: scavenger receptor BI, the tetraspanin FK228 cell line CD81, and two components of the hepatic tight junction (claudin

1 and occludin).5 It has been shown that the humoral immune response is a major driver of HCV E1E2 evolution during chronic infection because antibodies capable of neutralizing most viral variants in the swarm are continuously generated, but neutralization-resistant minor variants present in the swarm then become dominant and allow the virus to escape neutralization.6 Nonetheless, broadly neutralizing antibodies against E2 can offer protection against HCV infection, at least in an animal model.7 The laboratory of Thomas Baumert (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale and University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France) isolated 439 HCV glycoprotein E1E2 clones from pre-OLT and post-OLT sera of six patients undergoing liver transplantation Farnesyltransferase for HCV genotype 1b–induced cirrhosis.8 Phylogenetic analysis showed that in most patients

(four of six), the number and diversity of viral variants present in the serum abruptly decreased directly after transplantation (Fig. 1 in Fafi-Kremer et al.8). Conversely, the composition of the viral population remained largely stable when time points early (7 days) and late (1 month and later) after transplantation were compared. Such a decrease in quasispecies diversity after OLT had previously been observed; it is thought that OLT presents a genetic bottleneck through which only a limited number of selected variants can pass, with many others being eliminated.9-11 However, the mechanisms determining which variants are selected have never been addressed experimentally. Here the present study breaks new ground.