Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is an important pathogen that causes different liver diseases such as viral hepatitis and liver cirrhosis. HBV pregenomic RNA (pgRNA) plays a crucial role in HBV life cycle, which is not only the translation template of core (C) and polymerase (P), but also the template of reverse transcription. The ratio of P protein to core protein is tightly regulated. Since P and core are both translated by pgRNA and the open reading frame (ORF) of P is located downstream of the ORF of core, how to initiate P protein translation is a key scientific question. Previous studies suggest that P can be translated through different mechanisms, such as leaky scanning and reinitiation. In this review, we summarized the proposed mechanisms relevant to the translation of polymerase from HBV pgRNA through literature review and derivation.
乙型肝炎病毒（HBV）是导致肝炎、肝硬化等肝脏疾病的重要病原体。HBV前基因组RNA（pgRNA）在其生命周期中发挥着重要作用，它既是翻译病毒核心蛋白和聚合酶蛋白（polymerase，P）的信使RNA，也是病毒进行逆转录的模板。作为HBV的重要结构蛋白，P蛋白和core蛋白的比例在HBV复制中受到严格调控。由于二者均由pgRNA翻译产生，且P蛋白的开放阅读框（ORF）位于核心蛋白ORF的下游，P蛋白的翻译如何启动是一个十分关键的科学问题。既往研究认为，P蛋白可能通过泄露扫描、翻译再起始等机制来启动翻译。本文通过文献阅读与推演，对HBV pgRNA选择性翻译P蛋白的机制进展进行综述，并尝试总结了起始P蛋白翻译的可能机制。.
Keywords: Hepatitis B virus; Polymerase; Pregenomic RNA; Selective translation.