Mystery of Hepatitis E Virus: Recent Advances in Its Diagnosis and Management

Figure 1

The structure of the hepatitis E virus genome. RNA length: 7.2 kb. It has short 5 and 3 noncoding regions and three overlapping open reading frames (ORFs). ORF1 encodes the nonstructural proteins, including a methyl transferase (MT), cysteine protease (P), helicase (Hel), and RNA polymerase (RdRp), as well as three regions of unknown function (Y, PPR, and X). The 5 end of the RNA genome is capped with 7-methylguanosine (7 mG), and the 3 end is polyadenylated (poly A).