ifwal
<Yes, I know. I was using "cross breed" as a short cut expression to express the concept of what happens when 2 virions get into the same cell and everything goes just right (or wrong) and they swap a few stretches of RNA/DNA. The same process over which there was a bunch of hand-wringing during the recent Avian Flu scare. >
No it isn't the same process as occurs with Avian influenza, or any influenza for that matter. The Influenza genome is composed of 7 completely distinct RNA segments. One of each of the 7 segments get incorporated into the viral capsid to form a mature virus particle. When two different types of influenza strains enter a single cell, there are 7 segments from each strains so a total of 14 segments, lets call them A, B, C, D, E, F, G from strain #1, and a,b, c, d, e, f, g from strain #2. Random assortment of the different segments mean a wide range of novel viral genomes can be generated. Two examples are A, b, c, D, E, f, and G vs A, B, C, D, e, f, G. As anyone can see, the level of genetic variation that will be generated is staggering.
Hepatitis C has only a single RNA molecule for its genome, so it requires a template switching event. This means it is quite different and limited in both the probability and the range of phenotypic variation that can arise from any putative recombination event as compared to influenza. In any event, the error prone nature of the vial replication via RNA dependent RNA polymerase will generate far more variation than any template switching.
Why are you invoking DNA exchange in Hepatitis C replication?
