Effect of oxymatrine on the replication cycle of hepatitis B virus in vitro

Figure 2 Schematic diagram of HBV mRNAs and design of PCR primer and probe for determining pregenomic RNA (pgRNA). Four kinds of HBV mRNAs are transcribed from the same cccDNA template and overlap with each other in various regions (dashed lines, dark triangle indicating the initiate site of transcription). The largest mRNA, 3.5 kb pgRNA, encodes both core protein and DNA polymerase of HBV. The promoter region of the DNA polymerase gene, which does not exist in the other 3 smaller mRNAs, was selected as the amplifying target for determining pgRNA by real-time RT-PCR with primer PGP1, PGP2 and Taqman MGB probe TPG.