Hepatitis A causes

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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]; Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief: João André Alves Silva, M.D. [2]

Taxonomy

Viruses; ssRNA] viruses; ssRNA virus; positive-strand viruses; Picornavirales; Picornaviridae; Hepatovirus

Biology

Electron micrograph of the Hepatitis A virus (HAV), an RNA virus that can survive up to a month at room temperature. Courtesy: Public Health Image Library (PHIL), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Hepatitis A virus (HAV) is a non-enveloped, icosahedral, ssRNA virus with a single serovar. It is 27 nm in length

Genome

The HAV genome is encoded in 7474 nucleotides, which are divided into three regions:

• 5' untranslated region, with 742 nucleotides
• Single reading frame encoding a 2227 amino acid polypeptide, with 6681 nucleotides
• 3' noncoding region, with 63 nucleotides

The polypeptide encoded by the open reading frame is cotranslationally processed by a viral protease, resulting in four structural and seven nonstructural proteins (figure 1).

Four distinct genotypes of HAV have been identified in humans, although they do not appear to have important biological differences [3]. All four genotypes belong to a single serotype.