Hepatitis C Virus RF1_2k/1b Chimeras and a “Many Probes/One Spot” Approach to Their Identification

— The routinely used genotyping procedure, which is based on only one genomic locus, does not allow us to identify recombinant strains of viruses that have high genome variability in the region of a recombination point. Using recombinant strain RF1_2k/1b of hepatitis C virus as an example, we demonstrated the feasibility of its identification via a many probes/one spot approach. The proposed scheme was employed for subtyping of hepatitis C virus clinical samples of blood serum and was found to enable unambiguous assignment of these isolates to subtype 2k or 1b or their recombinant RF1_2k/1b.