Result: The results demonstrated that WT and W3S virions could be produced at a density of 1.20 to 1.25 g/mL.

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Result: The results showed that intracellular core-associated DNA had a tendency to be increased in W3S and W3S (N146G) compared with the WT, at either 5 or 7 days post-transfection (Figure 2D).

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Result: There was no difference in HBeAg expression among WT, W3S and W3S (N146G), in either the medium or cytoplasm (indicated as cell), at either 5 or 7 days after transfection (Figure 2A,B).

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Result: Our Western blot analysis revealed that the level of the glycosylated isoform of the wt-W3S HBsAg was much greater than that of W1S.

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Result: Since multiple amino acid residues within the MHR might be crucial for HBsAg antigenicity, we focused on identifying a specific amino acid residue(s) that played an important role in the complete loss of antigenicity of W3S <

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Result: We found natural mutations in the HBsAg-coding region of the W1S, W3S and adr4 by comparing them with other published sequences (Fig 1A), and the antigenicity of all three HBsAgs either from the transfected cell lysates or the culture supernatants was tested with commercially available ELISA kits.

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