Fig. 4

Immunoreactivity of denatured and soluble recombinant proteins. The crude preparations of denatured core (4A: lane C, 4C: lane 1) showed immunogenic bands at M. wt. of 24, 33 and 74 kDa, while E1/E2 protein bands (4A: lane E, 4C: lane 3) were visualized at M.wt. of 135 kDa, in addition to lower M. wt. bands at ~ 50 and 33kDa, whereas no immunogenic bands were visualized when both protein preparations (crude) were tested against control seronegative serum (4B). The purified preparations of soluble core and E1/E2 proteins demonstrated prominent immunogenic bands at the expected molecular weight of ~ 21 and 90 kDa, (4C: lane 2 and 4) respectively (black and red arrows). Lane (M) refers to the standard protein marker (11–245 kDa). Figure (4D) and (4E): Scattered plots showing the immunoreactivity of the denatured and soluble coating antigen mixtures to the corresponding antibodies in patients’ sera. All of the viremic/ non-viremic sera (n = 42/each) assayed against the denatured and soluble antigens showed OD₄₅₀ values > the cutoff value of 0.4344 and 0.358, respectively, while the seronegative sera showed values ≤ cutoff value