Dynamics of HBV infection in PHH cells.

(A) Modeling of the intracellular viral life cycle in HBV-infected primary human hepatocytes is shown. Intracellular HBV DNA is produced from cccDNA at rate α and is consumed at rate ρ. That is, a fraction 1−f of HBV DNA assembled with viral proteins as virus particles is exported from infected cells, and the other fraction f is reused for further cccDNA formation having a degradation rate of d. (B) Fits of the mathematical model (solid lines) to the experimental data (filled circles) on intracellular HBV DNA and cccDNA and extracellular HBV DNA in PHH without treatment or treated with ETV at different times post-infection are shown (red: intracellular HBV DNA, blue: intracellular cccDNA, green: extracellular HBV DNA). The shaded regions correspond to 95% posterior intervals and the solid curves give the best-fit solution (mean) for Eqs (1–4) to the time-course dataset. Error bar represent standard deviation of the mean for three independent samples. All data were fitted simultaneously.